


Coda of Fate

by Feztopus



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Chaotic Bisexuals, Established Relationship, F/M, Healing Sex, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 44,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23229235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feztopus/pseuds/Feztopus
Summary: It keeps happening this way. Dracula will be resurrected and it is his son's duty to stand against him with whatever companions fate provides.A scholar and a hunter pulled him from a century or two of sleep into the 21st century, and the cycle continues.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 35
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

Trevor fucking Belmont, House of Belmont, last of the Belmonts, had never lost a fight to man nor fucking beast. He had never won a fight to Sypha Belnades - which is why he was now trudging back to the office in the dark with soaked boots and a carrier bag of Chinese takeaway. 

He fumbled his key in the dank porch outside the door and nearly dropped the food. Inside it was hardly more salubrious. Mildew had been steadily climbing the walls since a particularly wet winter three years ago, and it wasn’t as if the letting agent gave a single shit as long as the rent came in. The carpet was holey and the stairwell up from street level literally always smelled of piss, but no one bothered them who wasn’t desperate for their very specialist help.

Sypha was curled up in the moth-eaten armchair in the big room with one of Adrian’s old tomes. She’d already set out plates, cups and utensils on the desk. Three of each.

“He’s back?” Trevor asked.

“Not yet.” Sypha’s brow furrowed as she put a receipt between the pages to mark her place and put the book down. “But he should be. And I thought, you know, maybe he’ll smell black bean sauce and come running.” She got up and snatched the prawn crackers out of the carrier bag before Trevor even put it down. 

“You know the more in my way you are the slower you actually get your dinner, don’t you?” 

Sypha crunched a cracker with no sign of remorse. Trevor sighed.

“Anyway. Hm, kung po chicken for you, hot and sour soup, fried rice, wontons… and some black bean noodles that are going to go to waste, apparently.” Trevor clenched his jaw. “I wish he’d at least told us how long he was expecting to be away.”

“I know, Trevor.” 

“Just, you’d think digging a guy out of the catacomb where he’s been sleeping for a couple of centuries and helping him get up to speed with the modern world might count for something.”

Sypha grinned.

“And he laid it on so thick the first month or so with that ‘you have returned me to the path of my destiny’ thing!” she tossed her head as if she had Adrian’s glossy flaxen locks, rather than a boyish crop. Trevor laughed. If nothing else, you could always take the piss out of Adrian’s tendency to be spectacularly dramatic. Something about immortality seemed to do that to people.

“Anything interesting in your reading?” Trevor asked as they settled themselves down to eat. 

“Mf-mhm…” Sypha aborted the reply around a mouthful of food and gestured for patience with her chopsticks. 

“So;” She began, once she’d swallowed. “There’s some charts in here that suggest in the spring, there’ll be a very interesting alignment of planets, magically speaking.”

Trevor frowned.

“Think it might be what he’s looking into?”

“Might be related. Or not - but it’s better than no ideas at all.” Sypha shrugged.

She got up to get some more food.

There was the sound of the front door opening, and a clattering in the hallway. 

“Adrian?!” Sypha put her plate down and headed out to the hall. She stopped dead, looking at the door, so Trevor followed with a frown on his face. 

It was Adrian, grubby, soaked by the rain and scowling; ahead of him, bound by silver chain, was a scrawny, bearded vampire in a grotty robe. 

"Who's this?" Trevor asked

"A lead, I hope. We'll need the toolbox." Adrian had hold of him by the collar of his robe and a face like thunder. 

"I bought a takeaway, Adrian. Chuck him in the broom cupboard and come eat first?" Adrian looked for a moment like he wasn’t going to agree. Trevor played his trump card. “Black bean noodles?” 

Adrian’s frown wobbled and broke into a smile that made Trevor’s breath catch. 

“I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

Trevor put a hand on Sypha’s arm to guide her back towards their dinner as Adrian began to shove his guest down the hallway toward the broom cupboard. The broom and mop clattered and the door slammed, and then Adrian was coming into the room, pulling off his rain soaked clothes. 

“Christ almighty, I hope you’re not going to conduct your interrogation like that.” Trevor spluttered around a mouthful of wonton.

“No, I’ll get some dry clothes to interrogate in.” Adrian smiled. Noodle tub and chopsticks in hand, he settled himself on the floor in front of the desk. 

“So - where’d you dig him up from?” Sypha asked. 

“Staking out a site with a legendary connection to my father. He and his late companions didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“When you say legendary…” Trevor began; “You mean they were wasting their time there?” 

“I mean - the link is more tenuous than the stories would have you believe but  _ because  _ of the legend there are things there they might use. And it’s well known enough that it seemed likely somebody would stop by.” Sypha’s lips pursed.

“And what are you hoping he’ll know?” 

“Where they plan to do it, maybe how much of the necessary materials they’ve collected.”

Talk was replaced for a while by nothing but pensive chewing. Sypha went to pack away the remains of her food, and paused as a thought occurred to her.

“You’re certain it is Dracula?” 

Adrian sighed and pushed a few stray bits of noodle around on his plate. 

“Not certain, but the timing is right.” He put down his chopsticks and started to get up. “And I don’t have anything better to go on.”

When the leftovers were in their boxes in the fridge, Trevor got out the toolbox ready for the interrogation while Adrian got some dry clothes.

“Are we going to do a good cop, bad cop routine?” Sypha asked. 

“I mean for one thing,” Trevor pointed out; “He can definitely hear us in there. But besides, we’re more uh - magic cop, vampire cop, and bad cop. Adrian, is that my-?” He caught sight of Adrian’s now very grim face. “Nevermind. We don’t need a routine really, do we?”

“No, just pain.”

“Well okay;” Trevor gritted his teeth. “Let’s get to it.”

They dragged the vampire from the broom cupboard and into the tiny office kitchenette. Adrian threw him against the cupboard under the sink and Sypha immediately called up ice to restrain his legs. The three of them stood together in the doorway, looking at the - frankly rather pitiful - creature. 

“What happened to his hand?” Sypha indicated the vampire’s left wrist, where bloody fabric was wrapped around a stump.

“I left it behind so his friends don’t know he’s missing.”

“What do we do if he doesn’t know anything?” Trevor said. 

“There are always witches and the like who’ll pay for a barely-live vampire they can break up for parts.” Adrian said. Trevor knew it was a lie calculated to frighten their prisoner but the thought made his stomach turn anyway. He hoped it was having the same effect on this - 

“What’s your name?” he asked, squatting down to look the vampire in the eye. He looked back with open suspicion 

“Pieter.” He said. Trevor couldn’t place his accent.

“Tell Pieter what you need him to share, Adrian.”

“We’ll start small.” Adrian said. He took a penknife from his pocket. Trevor knew its blade was silver, but he’d bet that poor Pieter wasn’t going to work that out until it was carving into him.

“What were you looking for, the night I captured you?” Pieter said nothing. Adrian flicked out the blade. 

“Sypha, are those restraints tight enough?” He asked. Sypha looked at him, then back at Pieter. She moved her hands slightly, face absolutely neutral, and Pieter whimpered as the ice around his ankles started to tighten. Trevor sucked a breath through his teeth. 

“She’s going to carry on until every bone in your feet is pulverised, Pieter.” Trevor said. 

“I will not. Betray.” Pieter hissed.

“Was it a jewel, Pieter?” Adrian said. “A reliquary perhaps, a weapon?”

Trevor searched Pieter’s face for any sign that Adrian had hit on the right thing. He’d never tested a vampire’s pain threshold, since normally the goal was pest control rather than rooting out crime rings. Still, this one’s face turned into a grimace like anybody else’s might when the bones in his ankles began to grind together.

“No.” Pieter gritted out. Adrian stepped close behind Trevor and held out the knife to him. Trevor shook his head and stood up to go to the toolbox. He heard Adrian take his place beside Pieter on the floor, so turned to see what he was doing. 

The knife sliced through the exposed skin over Pieter’s collarbone. The flesh sizzled in reaction to the silver as the blade moved, so there was no blood, but there was a tiny curl of acrid smoke. Pieter yelped. Adrian paused for a moment to see if it loosened his tongue, then went in to make the same incision on the other side. 

He tore open the robe, and the sound of rending fabric must have covered the sound of crunching bones because Pieter began to sob.

“If you tell me anything we can stop, Pieter.” The only answer Adrian got was a snarl, so he pressed on with shredding the skin on Pieter’s chest. 

After another fruitless several minutes, Sypha stepped in to touch Adrian’s shoulder and make him pause. She had twisted Pieter’s feet in their icy cage such that they looked deeply unnatural; and every time he flinched from Adrian’s blade there was a secondary yelp as he jarred the broken bones. 

Adrian looked at Sypha’s face and moved out of her way. She raised her hands just so, and a spike of ice rose from the floor, piercing through the joint of Pieter’s shoulder. He screamed. 

“I can keep you from bleeding out almost indefinitely Pieter. And unlike a human, I don’t have to limit the amount of pain you’re in to keep your heart beating.”

She was terrifying. Not for the first time, Trevor wondered how she had become so very good at violence. For all that she and her family had insisted when they first met that it wasn’t the speaker way, she was more creative at it than she was at anything else. 

Another spike through the other shoulder, then one through each knee. Still no answers from Pieter, and his screaming seemed to be getting weaker. 

“Shall we take a break?” Trevor suggested. “Let him suffer without company for a bit, and he might be more inclined to talk.”

Alucard nodded and Sypha dropped her hands from casting position. 

“What shall we do with him?” She asked. Alucard put a hand on her shoulder. 

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” He gestured at the mess Sypha had made of Pieter’s ankles. She nodded and the three of them trooped out into the hallway, then through the side door to the stairs that led up to the flat above. 

Trevor led the way in and slumped himself on to the sofa. Sypha paused once she was through the door, fists clenched and face tight. Adrian took her hand and drew her into an embrace. She tilted her chin up and he kissed her, soft and slow. The tension in her body began to dissolve against him. Her hands found their way into his hair and she pressed against him with increasing urgency. 

“You know it’s fucked up that this has you turned on, right?” Trevor asked. 

“That’s not - this is because I missed him.” Sypha 

“Besides, Trevor, I know you were enjoying watching her work.” Adrian turned toward him with an arched eyebrow. 

“I’m literally always excited by Sypha, I won’t be shamed for it.” Trevor pointed a finger at them. Sypha laughed and swept over to the sofa, towing Adrian by his shirt. She pulled him down with her as she draped herself across Trevor’s lap and kissed them both in turn. 

“Doesn’t saying you’re always excited by Sypha imply that you aren’t always excited by me?” Adrian leaned in to Trevor’s space.

“You wouldn’t expect me to admit to  _ liking _ you, would you Adrian?” Trevor joked. He was rewarded with a toothy grin and a kiss from Adrian. 

“It would still be fucked up if we were-” Sypha kissed Trevor, cutting him off. 

“Please, can we just not think about that for a bit, Trevor? Pretend Adrian just came home and we had dinner and talked?” Trevor couldn’t say no to that face. 

“I bet we took the piss out of him for coming home looking like a drowned rat.”

“Hey!” Adrian protested.

“You’ll have shut him up as soon as you took off your wet clothes.” Sypha reassured him. 

“Ah, yes, despite his protestations our Belmont likes me quite a lot, doesn’t he.” Adrian turned so he was facing them, one leg tucked under himself. He ran a hand under the hem of Trevor’s hoodie. Trevor knew where this was going and immediately yelped, trying to pull away or grab the hand to stop it moving. Sypha grabbed his wrists and leant into him to hold him still. 

“Fuck! I hate it when you gang up on meEEE!” Trevor kicked and jerked as Adrian found his target - the ticklish spot on Trevor’s hip. Sypha laughed, even as she was tossed out of his lap, and in a flash Adrian was there to catch her. 

“Oh! Mr Tepes, my hero!” She fell into a swoon in his arms, still giggling. 

“Ms Belnades, I will always be here to rescue you from this brute.”

“Oi!”

“No, no, you must always be there to save me  _ with _ this brute.” Sypha put her hand against Adrian’s chest, and turned to beam at Trevor. He slid from his seat on the sofa onto his knees in front of her, and pulled her in for a kiss. She returned it hungrily.

“Bedroom.” She breathed. Adrian picked her up, and Trevor was brought with them where Sypha’s hand was still on his chin. She kissed Trevor again, then Adrian, then pointed dramatically toward the open bedroom door.

“Onward!”

Adrian carried her through, with Trevor behind them, and carefully placed her on the bed. She drew him down with her to kiss him again. 

“Did you miss us, Adrian?” She looked past him just for long enough to catch Trevor’s eye. 

“Desperately.” Adrian was breathing heavily, half leaning on the bed over Sypha. 

“Enough to stop disappearing on stakeouts by yourself?” Trevor moved in tight behind Adrian, placed hands on his hips. Adrian started, and twisted to look over his shoulder with a look of betrayal. 

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you two have been plotting this.”

“You have given us a few days to think about it.” Sypha pointed out. Adrian sighed and dropped his head. 

“It’s easier to stay hidden alone. Easier if I’m not worrying about someone else getting hurt while I’m distracted.”

“Can you at least tell us where you’re headed and for how long?” Sypha reached up to stroke his hair out of his face. “We were so worried.” He nodded.

“Yes, yes I will. I - I’m sorry.” Trevor rubbed his hands up Adrian’s sides, then leaned over him to kiss the bared skin where his shirt collar had fallen aside. Sypha pulled herself forward, sat up a little, and slid her hands over Adrian’s waist to undo his trousers and untuck his shirt. 

Trevor stepped back for a moment to relieve himself of his own clothes and when he pulled his head free from his t-shirt and hoodie, Sypha had rolled Adrian on to his back and was sat across his hips with her hands on his bare chest. He was flushed, unnaturally beautiful - especially for someone illuminated by a cheap electric lightbulb - and Trevor’s heart clenched as Sypha ran a hand down Adrian’s stomach to rest over the open fly of his trousers.

Trevor got onto the bed beside them and let Sypha kiss him breathless. She surveyed Trevor and Adrian both.

“Oh what  _ do  _ I want to do with you two?” She wriggled a little with excitement and Adrian, underneath her, huffed out a little breath. Trevor admired him for a moment, reached out to touch his face.

“I’ve got an idea for at least one thing I want to do with him.” He leaned in to Adrian to kiss him. 

“Is it going to need me to move?” Sypha asked with a little pout. 

“Yes, but you were going to have to move to take your clothes off anyway.” She rolled her eyes but got up off Adrian and the bed anyway, and began peeling off her clothes. 

“I’d quite like to know what it requires of me.” Adrian looked at Trevor from under his eyelashes. 

“Lie back and take me?” Trevor smiled. Adrian bit his lip and smiled back.

"There are a couple of things I had better grab then." Adrian rolled to one side and reached into a drawer in the bedside table. Trevor pulled him back as soon as it seemed like he’d got what he needed, and reached over him to grab the lube from his hand. Sypha kicked off her jeans and jumped back on to the bed on the other side of Adrian. 

“And where do I fit in with you boys’ plans?”

Trevor put himself between Adrian’s legs, lifting an ankle out of his way as he went. 

“I was going to be here, so…”

“Hmmmm, his mouth is free.” Sypha tapped her lip thoughtfully. Adrian grinned at her. She leaned over him and threaded her fingers into his hair as she kissed him . 

Trevor tried to keep his eyes on them as he peeled Adrian’s trousers and underwear off him. He hooked his heels into Trevor’s back to pull him in tight as soon as his legs were freed. Sypha guided one of Adrian’s hands between her legs, and Trevor felt a throb of lust at the thought of her, hot and wet in Adrian’s hand.

Trevor ran his hand up the underside of Adrian’s thigh and squeezed his buttock. He and Sypha were beginning to move in rhythm with each other. 

Trevor slicked his hand with lube and ran his fingers from under Adrian's balls to between his buttocks. Adrian sighed under Sypha and pushed against Trevor's fingers. Trevor bit his lip and pushed back. 

The heat as his first finger penetrated was almost as compelling as the gasp from Adrian. Sypha sat up to watch Adrian's face, with a hand trailing over his chest. He squirmed on Trevor's finger and it was utterly overwhelming. 

Adrian grabbed his cock and began to stroke in time with the hand he had between Sypha’s legs. Trevor curled the finger he had inside him and Adrian moaned and arched his back. 

Sypha moved so she was kneeling just above Adrian’s head. She swept her hand around to gather his hair out of her way, and stroked his cheek. He held eye contact with her as he raised the hand that had just been under her to his mouth. 

“You’re beautiful.” She told him. She looked down the length of Adrian’s body to Trevor, and grinned at him before starting to shift herself forward to straddle Adrian’s face.

Trevor slipped his finger out of Adrian to go for more lube, and the way Adrian whimpered and shifted as if to offer himself up, sent a flush of warmth through Trevor from head to toe. 

Adrian’s face was hidden from him by Sypha now, but he heard the muffled moan as he pushed back with two fingers now. Sypha sighed and squirmed on her seat and Adrian’s hand gripped his cock more firmly. 

Trevor eased in slowly, letting Adrian relax around his fingers. He almost prefered getting him off like this to any other way, revelling in feeling the contraction of muscles and having precise control over where he stimulated. 

He curled his fingers and;

“Mmf-aaaahh” came the response. Sypha had begun to rock back and forth, and the increasing frequency of her moans suggested she was getting close to her first orgasm. 

Trevor hauled Adrian’s leg over his shoulder so he could pull in close and start to rub his own cock along the length of Adrian’s. He grabbed the lube again and dribbled some between their shafts, and Adrian obligingly took hold of them both to give them more friction. 

Trevor groaned and thrust into Adrian’s hand, curled his fingers into Adrian’s arse.

Sypha came with a glorious shout. Trevor bit at Adrian’s knee, since it was the only bit of him he could reach. 

Their rhythm together increased. Trevor could tell Adrian was getting close. He didn’t seem to be giving Sypha his full attention and she flopped herself backwards off him before sitting upright to watch. 

Trevor caught her eye and the glint of wickedness she gave him was inspiration enough to redouble his efforts, trying to hit the sweet spots on every pass and push Adrian over the edge. Adrian was gasping and clutching at the bedding, and Trevor could feel him clench around his fingers. 

Adrian always swore when he came, and Trevor almost always swore with him, whether by virtue of reaching a climax of his own at the same time, or simply in awe of him.

Sypha was fingering herself roughly in time with the rhythm Trevor was trying to maintain, and just as she breathed out a sweet little moan, Adrian swore, and spasmed, and came.

“Fuck.” Trevor said. 

“God, he’s so beautiful.” Sypha agreed. 

Trevor withdrew his fingers and leaned over Adrian to kiss him. 

“Trevor.” Sypha said, her voice breathy. He looked up and she she gave him a look of naked lust. Adrian looked between them with heavy eyelids and a lazy smile on his lips.

“I think she wants to fuck you, you know.” He said.

“Come and get me, Sypha.” Trevor sat back on his heels and spread his arms wide. Sypha curled her legs under herself and leaned over Adrian to give him a little kiss before hopping off the bed and coming round to Trevor.

“Lie down.” 

Trevor did as he was told, and watched Sypha approach him. She slid up the length of his torso and grabbed a handful of hair before kissing him roughly.

Trevor ran his hands across her back, squeezed one of her buttocks, ran his fingers through her hair. She bit his collarbone before beginning to sit up and manouevre herself into position so she could ride him. He groaned as she sank on to him, hot, and slick, and yielding. He braced his hands against her hips and began to push back into her as she began to move above him. 

She scraped her fingernails across his ribs as she clenched around him and they both moaned. Adrian rolled on to his side and started running his fingers through Trevor’s hair, across his scalp as he watched them. 

Sypha was grinding against Trevor, and her breath was becoming more ragged. They clung to each other more tightly as they approached their climax. 

Sypha cried out, and almost stuttered to a halt for a moment, but Trevor urged her on and she kept moving. He was almost curling in towards her, but Adrian placed his hands on Trevor’s shoulders and pinned him down. Trevor looked up and Adrian looked at him with such adoration, and Sypha moaned as she came again, and Trevor’s own orgasm shook through him.

The three of them formed a sweaty, sticky puddle of limbs. Sypha had pulled her boys in close either side of her, and all their legs were tangled together such that you wouldn’t know which belonged to who without the evidence of Trevor’s dark hair and Adrian’s supernatural pallor. 

“Adrian, did you get jizz in my hair?” Trevor asked, aware that his head felt stickier than he liked it. Adrian coughed and Trevor was sure he could see a blush rising on his cheeks. 

“Ah, yes, I might’ve done… In my defence, Sypha has absolutely got fanny in mine.”

Sypha blew a raspberry and snuggled in tighter.

“Little shower before we go back downstairs then.” Trevor sighed. “Who’s going first?”

Sypha was out of the bed and halfway to the bathroom before the others could react.

“Oh for - you’re the least grimy out of all of us!” Adrian exclaimed. Sypha giggled as she locked the door behind her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They weren't really meant to fuck in the middle of the interrogation but they're too into each other.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Information is gained and plans are formulated.

It was almost midnight by the time they came back down to the office to see if being left pinned to the kitchen floor had softened Pieter’s resolve. He snarled when they poked their heads through the doorway.

Adrian picked up his penknife from the counter and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. 

“Now, where were we… Ah, yes, what were you in that house to find, Pieter?” The only response he got was a growl. 

Sypha’s ice had started to melt and he was in a sorry state with his clothes soaked through and ragged holes in his flesh, but he seemed to have no inclination to talk and bring it to an end.

Trevor put a hand on Adrian’s shoulder to still him, and went to the toolbox. He pulled out a pair of pliers. 

“We can start up again the old fashioned way, can’t we. Fingernails.” He saw Adrian flinch, and hoped that meant it would be a sore spot for Pieter too. Trevor crouched beside him, and Adrian held him down so the chains could be rearranged to free up some fingers on Pieter’s remaining hand. Trevor steadied himself and grasped Pieter’s little fingernail with the pliers. He braced himself against Adrian on the assumption he’d hold up better than the kitchen cupboards, took a deep breath, and yanked. The fingernail tore away and Pieter screamed. Trevor dropped it on the floor in disgust. 

“You’ve bandaged that stump up very neatly for someone you were intending to torture, Adrian.” Trevor observed.

“I didn’t want him dying of septicaemia before I got the information I wanted, did I?”

“That’s very professional of you dear.” Sypha had taken a seat on the worktop in front of the microwave and was kicking her feet slightly. She batted her eyelashes at Adrian when he turned to look at her. 

“Please-” Pieter croaked. Trevor and Adrian both turned back to look at him.

“Yes?” Adrian said. 

“I don’t want to listen to you all fucking again.” Adrian’s mouth dropped open. Trevor looked up at the ceiling and considered the relative layout of upstairs. 

“Whoops?” He scratched his stubble. Sypha dropped from the worktop and came up close behind them. 

“You know Pieter, I wouldn’t have taken you for a prude.” She had a manic gleam in her eye that rarely foretold a fun time for the person on the receiving end of it. She put a hand on one of each of her lovers’ shoulders. “Which part upset you the most?”

“What?”

“Do you have some moral objection? Did you feel left out? I’m interested to know.”

Pieter sort of looked horrified to be asked. 

“It’s just embarrassing… I don’t want to hear it.”

“Is it worse than Trevor pulling out your fingernails?” The look in her eye was truly terrifying now and Trevor imagined the only reason Pieter hadn’t pissed himself was that he hadn’t seen where that gleam could lead… yet.

Sypha stroked Adrian’s damp hair.

“Because, he can carry on with his pliers, and after that we find more ways to hurt you. Or I can take them both back to bed and leave you to shiver down here; or you can tell Adrian what he wants to know. It’s up to you Pieter.”

“I’m so frightened of you.” Trevor was overflowing with admiration.

“Yeah, but you enjoy that.” Sypha softened as she smiled at him, but the hard edge returned as soon as she looked back at Pieter. 

He grimaced. 

“Take another fingernail, Trevor.” Adrian said.

“Alright! Alright please!” Pieter flinched as Trevor came toward him with the pliers again.

“Yes?” Adrian put out a hand to indicate Trevor should pause.

“There’s supposed to be a reliquary there!” Pieter rushed out.

“What’s in it?” Adrian pushed.

“I don’t know, honestly, a piece of something - or someone, I don’t know, please…”

“Okay.” Adrian took a breath. “What exactly were you told to look for?”

“A - a lantern-sized container of iron and silver, marked with a dragon. Uhh, and if we have it, we can be directed to the rest of the materials we need, I think.”

“The materials you need for what?” Trevor interjected.

“Our commander has been preparing to raise his lord for two hundred years, the planets are almost in position.” 

“Where does it happen? The raising.” 

“I only know our commander has turned an astrologer to work out the exact place, but - somewhere within a few hours travel?”

“That’s infuriatingly vague.” Adrian rubbed a hand across his eyes. 

“Adrian, I found something about a planetary confluence around the equinox earlier, do you think that’s it? I might be able to work it out…” Sypha squeezed his shoulder. Adrian looked up at her and made a pleased little huff. He turned back to Pieter;

“Right, so collecting a reliquary, no idea what’s in it, or who your “commander” intends to raise, or where… When were you turned, Pieter?”

“1826.” Pieter furrowed his brow. Adrian furrowed his right back. He turned to Trevor and Sypha. 

“That’s suspiciously close to when I went to ground. Someone must have survived that last battle and let someone know I was out of the way.” 

“Then this is what you’ve been looking for?” Trevor said.

“Do we have anything else we need from him?” Sypha’s hands stiffened on their shoulders, ready to move. Adrian looked down at his hands.

“I can’t think of anything. Might as well dispose of him.” 

“You’ll need to carry him outside.” Sypha said, gesturing away the ice that still held Pieter in place. 

“Dispose?” Pieter was hoarse and shivering, but apparently still had some desire to stay alive.

“Dispose.” Adrian confirmed. “I promise you it’s a kindness, Pieter. We send you back to your coven, they know that you talked, they flay you alive. And they get to know what we know, and that’s hardly maintaining the element of surprise.” Pieter shrank away from him as best he could, but was scooped up and slung over Adrian’s shoulder. 

“Eugh, Adrian you’ve got vampire juice all over my shirt!” Trevor protested. 

“That’s why I borrowed it. No sense ruining one of my own.”

“You owe me a new one if you can’t get the stains out, you git.” Trevor followed as Adrian carried Pieter out into the hall. Sypha had gone ahead to open the front door.

“You’re going to be subtle about it, aren’t you Sypha?” Trevor asked for reassurance. After the last time she’d been spotted disposing of a vampire he was keen not to draw unnecessary attention. 

“Yes, a controlled burn and no bright light.” Sypha confirmed. “I’ll even sweep up after if it makes you happier.” 

“If I hadn’t seen you do it a few dozen times, Sypha, I’d say you were far too chirpy to be a killer.” She shot Trevor a dazzling grin over her shoulder, and adoration bloomed again in his chest. Adrian chuckled, and threw Pieter on to the concrete landing outside the office door, where he curled into a ball and whimpered. Sypha stood over him, hands raised at the ready. 

“Thank you for your help, Pieter.” She said. She splayed her fingers and lifted her hands over him, and a glow began to suffuse the air around them. Adrian and Trevor began to draw back, preparing themselves to shield their eyes. The glow increased, and so did the temperature of the air, as Sypha forced a ball of flame down Pieter’s throat and cremated him from the inside before he could scream.

“Fetch me the dustpan and brush would you, Trevor?” She said. He went without complaining, since it was an excuse to get away from the appalling smell of smouldering flesh.

“That fucking stinks.” He told her as he handed over the dustpan and brush. “I’ll put the kettle on.” He let the front door close behind him, and tiptoed around the damp and gory patches on the kitchen floor to fill the kettle and turn it on. He retrieved the mugs he and Sypha had been using all day, and grabbed the one that said “SPOOKY BITCH” on it in big gold letters out of the cupboard for Adrian. He mopped the floor half-heartedly while he waited for the kettle to boil.

Adrian and Sypha came back in and she emptied the ashes into the kitchen bin. 

“So… Now what?” Trevor asked them. 

“We need to know what materials they need so we can intercept them, first.” Adrian said.

“Does that mean we have to hunt down the same reliquary they are?” Sypha looked incredulous.

“Luckily, from what he said about it leading them to the other necessary things, I think I’ll probably have another way around it.” Adrian looked very tired and drawn. Trevor handed him his mug of tea.

“Shall we think about it in the morning? You looked tired enough when you came home, let alone now.” Adrian nodded. He let Trevor steer him out of the kitchen and up to the flat. Sypha followed a minute later, with the book she’d had earlier. 

“Might as well get started on my next job, right?” She waggled it. 

“In the morning please?” Trevor had pulled Adrian down onto the sofa with him, and they were pressed close with their cups of tea in hand. Sypha looked like she was about to argue, then put the book down on the coffee table. She held out a hand to Adrian.

“That shirt will need a cold soak to get the blood out, I can put it in before we go to bed.” 

"Seeing me undressed earlier wasn't enough then?” Adrian smiled and handed his mug to Trevor before pulling off the t-shirt he’d stolen out of Trevor’s drawer. 

“He says, as if he doesn’t loaf around here topless all the time.” Sypha laughed as she took it from him. 

They curled up on the sofa together while they finished their tea. Sypha brought up a few stupid videos on her phone and they watched, laughing and mimicking, until their cups were empty and their eyelids were heavy. 

Trevor tied Adrian’s hair back into a French plait, and they sprawled into bed together. Adrian curled into Trevor’s chest and Sypha wrapped herself around Adrian’s back. 

Sypha was out of bed first in the morning, and roused the boys with a pot of coffee. Trevor awoke to Sypha’s voice; the smell of coffee and Adrian’s soap with his face tucked in to Adrian’s chest, and the moment was so perfect that it was all the more dreadful when Sypha plonked down with her big book and said;

“Time to find out where this raising will be then.”

“Couldn’t wait til we’d had our coffee to get started then.” Trevor grumbled. Adrian stroked his hair lazily away from his face. 

“Adrian, you said you might have something like they were looking for when you picked Pieter up?” Sypha had opened the book to where she left off last night, but today she’d pulled a notebook out of the bedside table and started to scribble in it. 

“Mm, his description sounded like the sort of reliquary some of my father’s soldiers made in the months after his first fall. Little mementoes put together in hopes of drawing him back some day.” He looked significantly at Sypha from his pillow. “And as you well know, that weight of expectation can have its own power.” Sypha looked grave.

“But it won’t do it alone, right?”

“No, but put the right kind of locator spell on it and they might be able to collect the pieces they actually need.”

Trevor finally let go of Adrian and squirmed upright.

“Have you really got one of these reliquaries?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“I have an awful lot of my father’s things.” Adrian said. “And… me. Being his flesh and blood, I’d hope would be enough.” 

“You’re volunteering to be a spell reagent?” Sypha said.

“A sort of catalyst, if I’m right about how this ought to work.” He propped himself up on his elbows. “Sypha, you remember the spell we used for those changelings? It shouldn’t be far from that.”

“Adrian, we needed both of us to pull that one off and we knew exactly what we were looking for, if you have to just… be a component how can I...?” 

Adrian placed a hand on her arm. 

“You’re stronger than you were, and better practised in the skills. Ah! And I have some suggestions about maximising the power draw from the environment.”

“If that’s our next move I’d better start shifting furniture then.” Trevor said resignedly. Adrian rolled back towards him.

“One thing before you go, please.” He slipped one arm past Trevor to brace against the mattress, then pulled himself up the length of Trevor’s body. He slotted one leg in between Trevor’s thighs and pinned him down to kiss him.

“Well the boner isn’t going to help me move the sofa, is it.” Trevor said when he was released.

“Do I get one of those before we start?” Sypha leaned across the bed and pawed at Adrian’s hip. He rolled off Trevor and over to her in one, fluid movement. He grabbed her chin in his hand, and pressed a kiss to her mouth. 

“Well, I’m putting on some pants and going to heave things around in the living room, join me when you’re done.” Trevor rolled out of the bed and grabbed some boxers from his drawer. He headed into the living room and started to haul the sofa off to one side. They were speaking too quietly to hear what they were saying, but the cadence of Adrian and Sypha’s conversation in the next room had the unmistakable quality of people picking apart a fun puzzle. 

Trevor rolled back the rug and grabbed the broom to clear any debris out of the way so the nerds in the next room could draw their magic circles and get yet more wax on the floorboards. He put the kettle on and made tea, and finally Sypha and Adrian emerged from the bedroom, more clothed than Trevor was, and wearing resolute expressions. 

“Is there something I can be getting on with while you two uh - “ Trevor vaguely imitated Sypha’s casting gestures.

“Hah.” Sypha gently restrained his hands. “You’ll need to note down the locations as the spell reveals them.”

“Last time you got a vision didn’t you, have you adapted it to throw up an address?” He couldn’t tamp down the sarcasm in his voice, even though he knew it wasn’t the time.

“I’ll tell you what I’m seeing. You’re a reasonably fast typist when you’re on-” She waved her hand uncertainly in the air. “Fucking, reddit or whatever, you should be able to keep up enough.”

“Secretarial work isn’t my usual  _ thing _ … but, fine, if it’s how I can be useful.” He tried not to sound petulant. 

“Also probably you should put clothes on, this might take some time.” Sypha gave him a warm smile. 

Adrian picked up the packet of chalk from the old apothecary cabinet under the window and began to pace out the dimensions of their circle. Trevor excused himself for a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and by the time he returned Adrian and Sypha both were on their knees marking out cardinal points and complex sigils on the floor. 

“My laptop is on the side there, Trevor.” Sypha waved her hand in its general direction without looking up. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as she drew a flowing line which began to glow faintly as she took her chalk from the surface. Trevor collected the laptop from the kitchen worktop and settled himself on the floor outside the confines of the circle. The air was beginning to prickle as the circle drew power in, and it made him itch, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to sit with it for long once they got going. 

Adrian stood up. 

“I think that’s got it.” He said. His hair was beginning to rise like someone had rubbed it with a balloon. Sypha sat back on her heels and looked over their work, then up at Adrian. She let out a tense little laugh when she spotted Adrian’s hair. 

“What- oh for-” He tried to smooth it down but it just made it worse. Sypha giggled and Trevor couldn’t stifle a laugh of his own. Adrian huffed out of the room and came back with his hair tied into a ponytail that only partially restrained the static fluff. 

“Both of yours is doing it too.” He pointed out.

“Neither of us minds as much.” Trevor replied, with what he considered his most disarming smile. 

“Or has as much hair.” Sypha stood up and went to put her chalk away. She took Adrian’s arm and went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Come on, the sooner we’re done, the sooner you can brush your hair.” 

They laid out candles dressed in oils that Trevor couldn’t for the life of him grasp the purpose of, and Adrian pricked a finger and dropped blood in a few carefully chosen spots. 

Sypha kissed the finger, then he stepped into the circle and seated himself in the centre. Trevor readied his hands on the keyboard. Sypha stood in front of Adrian at the Northern point of the circle and lifted her arms. The two of them gave each other an almost imperceptible nod, and she began to work the spell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sypha's fucking terrifying you guys, I love her.
> 
> This chapter was meant to be like a thousand words shorter so please buckle in for the long haul here and send me your love.   
> I'm sat here writing this while my spouse works on a pitch doc for a book about the apocalypse during like, the most apocalyptic event of our lifetimes and I can't help but find that just so fucking funny.   
> Take care of yourselves and wash your hands loves.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic happens, information is collected, plans are hatched.

_“Blood. Pulsing blood under pale skin. A woman with blonde hair, surrounded by children in uniforms. The blazers are green, the crests have a boat and a white rose on them._

_“A grave, quite old, between two others with angels on them. A tightly packed, overgrown cemetery. Grand entrances and abandoned tombs._

_“A red jewel, in a gold setting, cabochon cut with a heraldic serpent carved into it, with an inventory tag in a drawer, in a storage case. The museum is in the shadow of a tower, at the top of a hill.”_

The glow around Adrian faded and he slowly sank back to the floor. Sypha’s hair relaxed back around her face and her eyes returned to their normal colour. Trevor didn’t dare speak until Adrian broke the silence. 

“Sypha?” His voice had gone hoarse and his hair tie had not managed to hold back his long hair when the air around them suddenly stirred as the magic took hold. 

Sypha pushed herself up from the heap where she’d landed on the floor. She scrunched up her face and blinked. Finally, her eyes focused on Adrian and she scrambled forward to break the line of the circle. She and Adrian drew close and collided into an embrace, and Trevor’s limbs moved him to them without a thought. The air still crackled with static but it began to fade as the three of them clung together in the smudged remains of the circle.

“Did you get the notes?” Sypha asked abruptly.

“Yeah, I did yeah, I - I don’t know how coherent it is -” Trevor ran his hands through his hair. Adrian pulled them both tighter to him and laid kisses on each of their faces over and over again. 

They didn’t really talk until Sypha was mopping the chalk marks away and Trevor was brewing more tea. Adrian was on the sofa, running an old-fashioned brush through his hair and poring over the notes on Sypha’s laptop for any thread that could lead them somewhere. 

“Can you draw that school crest for us Sypha?” She paused and worried the head of the mop for a moment, then set it aside and picked up a notebook and pen from the bookcase. She folded up beside Adrian on the sofa and scribbled for a few minutes, tore out the page, and passed it to him.

“I’m certain I know _what_ the jewel is even if we don’t know _where_ it is.” He said. Trevor poked his head round the corner with cups of tea in hand. 

"What is it?" 

Adrian rubbed a hand over his face and frowned. 

"It is a jewel of my father's which my mother chose for him. Every time he has died he has been wearing it - it seems to find its way back to him without any particular effort."

"Christ." Trevor put down Adrian's mug in front of him, then handed Sypha's over to her. He went back for his own, and flopped onto the sofa next to Adrian with a deep sigh. 

"Yes I know. Most people's daddy issues don't follow them for centuries." Adrian slouched in his seat. 

"And we're the lucky bastards who get to deal with it." Trevor put his cup down and wrapped an arm around Adrian’s shoulders. “We’re with you, you know.”

“We are.” Sypha agreed. “You don’t even need to give us the speech about entwined destinies.” She almost made it to the end of the sentence straight faced, but a laugh crept into her voice. Trevor gave Adrian’s shoulders a squeeze and chuckled too. Adrian finally straightened up and let out a little laugh.

“I am truly grateful that fate brought you to me.” He craned his neck to look at Trevor, who gave him a shove.

“What did we say about the destiny talk?” He asked. 

“I apologise.” Adrian looked at his lap and then put the laptop aside so he could pull them in closer.

Sypha fiddled with the drawing in her hand.

“Maybe I should take this to Dian’s and see if anyone recognises it.” 

“Worth a try - how up to date are they on what we’re up to?” Trevor asked.

“They know that Alucard is walking the Earth again but they don’t know he’s with us. I didn’t think it would be safe to share that detail even in Speaker circles, so apart from the news that I have taken up with some terribly attractive monster hunters, I haven’t told anyone much.”

“Terribly attractive, is it?”

“Trevor, we own mirrors, you know what you look like.” Alucard smiled.

“It’s nicer to hear her say it out loud! I’m a simple bisexual, I see a pretty girl, I want her to think I’m pretty too.” Trevor grinned. Adrian stroked two fingers under Trevor's jawline. 

“And what about pretty boys?”

“Ahaha." Trevor knew he was blushing. "Those too.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Sypha said with a laugh in her voice. “I think I’ll head over in a bit and see what I can find out.”

“Let me know if you won’t be home for dinner.” Alucard gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. He grabbed the laptop again and started to search strings of words from the spell visions. Sypha got changed and readied a bag with the drawing, notes on her visions and a few other essentials before kissing Trevor and Adrian, and heading out to the cafe. 

  
  


By the time Sypha returned Adrian had spent at least two hours frowning at the laptop and intermittently scribbling notes, and Trevor had done some dishes and made at least three rounds of tea. They were beginning to fidget when the door opened and Sypha came in.

“Hey, I’ve brought a friend back to help with casting the horoscope, she’s downstairs-”

“A fr- Sypha, you said you weren’t telling anyone what we’re doing?” Adrian started to get up.

“I haven’t exactly - I told her what I need the horoscope to find, but not what for? I trust her not to pry any further.” Sypha said. “Anyway my point was, if you want to come down and say hi please do.”

“Is it someone we know?” Trevor asked.

“Laurel? Ah, yes, we went to that Halloween party at hers last year?”

“The one who dressed as Capricorn? Oh dear, Trevor.” Alucard purred beside him. 

“Oh Christ.” Trevor groaned. “I’d probably better go make her a tea and pretend I’m a functional human being hadn’t I?” Sypha smiled at him as he got up. 

“You’ve got the advantage of not being dressed as a sexy cat-boy this time!” She looped her arm through his as they turned toward the top of the stairs. “Are you coming, Adrian?”

“I’m sober too!” Trevor protested. 

Adrian did join them to say hello to Laurel, a rosy-cheeked Speaker woman with blonde hair who greeted Trevor far more warmly than he deserved when the last time he saw her he’d been narrowly prevented from starting a fight in her living room by Adrian hoisting him over one shoulder and removing him from the room. 

She’d laid out her things on the desk - a stack of star charts, graph paper, rulers and compasses, and was tapping away at a calculator. 

Sypha stroked her shoulder as she came round the desk to sit the other side of it, and Trevor excused himself to go put the kettle on. He could hear all their voices talking quietly in the next room, interspersed with laughter. 

After delivering tea to Laurel and Sypha, and requesting Sypha join them shortly to discuss what they’d come up with in their own research, Trevor and Adrian retreated back upstairs.

“It’d be nice to know that you weren’t all taking the piss out of me down there.” 

“Trevor, if you can suggest a way to have a dignified blazing row with someone’s housemate while dressed as a sexy cat, do let me know.” Adrian arched an eyebrow. Trevor scowled and pouted. 

“You did make a very sexy cat though.” Adrian said, by way of compensation. It worked. Trevor could feel himself blushing and moved in close to Adrian to whisper;

“Your vampire outfit was pretty sexy too.” That earned him a laugh. It had just been Adrian’s own clothes with a set of extremely cheap plastic fangs to hide his actual teeth, and had been very well received at the party. 

“We’ve probably run out of things we can usefully do til Sypha tells us if our shortlist has the right museum on it, wanna snog on the sofa for a bit?” Adrian considered the proposition. 

“I think that would be a welcome distraction.”

They got a good ten minutes of kissing done by the time Sypha came back up to talk through their current knowledge. She squeezed in between them with her laptop and the notes app on her phone open and went through what information the patron’s at Dian’s had been able to share.

“So I have the name and address of the school, it’s kind of weirdly close and a couple of people are pretty sure they know the teacher - the woman I saw. What’d you dig up?”

Adrian directed her to the short list of possible museums, each with a picture of its frontage for her to inspect.

“Mm, no, no… ah! Yes! This one!”

“Bristol?” Adrian leaned to look over her shoulder. “I really can’t imagine how it ended up there.”

“Museums pick up things from all over, there’s no reason it should be in an obvious place. It’s close enough to drive to at least… How about the cemetery?”

“Seems to be Highgate.” Adrian pulled up a page of images for Sypha to look over. She nodded.

“I don’t see the exact grave in these.” She pursed her lips. “Adrian, don’t you know where the remains went?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t in a fit state to oversee their disposal. I requested my companions do something discreet with them and took to my - what was it you called it Trevor? - my sardine can full of bastard.”

Trevor grinned and turned back to the map he’d been checking on his phone.

“We’ll probably just have to go there and walk around til we find it. Should that be our first port of call or?”

“Let’s work that out once Laurel has headed home.” Sypha wriggled back out of the nook she’d formed for herself between them and headed for the door. “I’m gonna go check on her.” 

Adrian mused out loud;

“I’d suggest that they won’t wish to harvest blood this far out from the event… and I’d like to narrow things down a little before we search for the burial.” 

“Sounds like a strong enough start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am becoming increasingly aware that I've bitten off more than I can chew/have ovverreached my capabilities with this here story but I'm gonna keep pushing bc I have some real good moments in mind here.
> 
> I will be accepting encouragement. (especially if it comes in the form of illustrations of cat-Trevor being forcibly removed from a Halloween Party.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio set out to secure the first artefact that might be used in resurrecting Dracula.   
> After a little quality time together.

Sypha agreed that the museum was likely the best place to start. They spent the rest of the afternoon planning a break-in. Keen not to overthink it, they built the plan around Adrian’s superhuman speed and some security-disrupting magic. 

Trevor found himself wishing he could be more use than just reconnaissance and lookout, but there had to be some downsides to being in a relationship with two of the most brilliant beings on the planet. Sometimes that was being reminded that you were punching well above your weight. 

He was first to head to bed, muttering about having a headache. 

Sypha followed before he’d fully fallen asleep and curled herself around his back. 

“Adrian not coming?” Trevor asked.

“He said he wanted some alone time. I think he’s doing that gothic melancholy thing on the roof.” She rubbed a comforting hand across his chest. 

“We should buy him a Batman costume to do it in.” Trevor smiled. He felt Sypha grin against his back.

“I don’t know, I think he probably has enough frilly shirts to keep him going.”

They drifted off in comfortable quiet. Adrian roused them both when he crawled up under the duvet between them some time later. Sypha uttered some syllables that might have been swear words as Adrian’s cold fingers found one of each of their hands and he nestled into their warmth. 

Trevor had to wriggle a bit to extract himself from Adrian’s iron grip in the morning. There was no sign his movements had disturbed the others as he headed for the shower.

Ablutions complete, he made tea and padded back into the bedroom. Adrian and Sypha had woken up, and were lying face-to-face, whispering and kissing one another’s hands. They barely acknowledged him as he came in.

“Morning.” Trevor said.

He grabbed a pair of boxers from his drawer. When he turned back towards the bed, Adrian and Sypha were watching him instead of whatever they'd been doing before.  


“Well I’ll take it as a compliment that you decided to admire my hairy arse rather than snogging each other.” 

“Mmm, Trevor, come back to bed.” Sypha reached out towards him with a contented smile on her face. Adrian didn’t say a word but licked his lips with his eyes fixed on Trevor. 

"Have you two been talking about me?" Trevor swallowed hard when Sypha only bit her lip in response. 

"I had some ideas while you were in the shower." Adrian nuzzled at Trevor's throat as he climbed back into the bed. 

"Mm?" Trevor was already a little too turned on to manage anything more coherent and internally cursed himself for being so easy. 

"You seemed a little sad when you went to bed last night. I was considering what might cheer you up." Adrian's hands were drifting lower, and Sypha sank her teeth into Trevor's shoulder. 

"This is a strong start." Trevor sighed. Adrian almost purred as he slipped a hand underneath Trevor's bottom, stroking cool fingers from his balls downward. 

Trevor made an undignified squeak as Adrian's fingers teased between his buttocks. 

"And how about that?" Adrian was looking down at Trevor like he wanted to swallow him whole. Trevor only nodded, not really trusting his mouth. 

Sypha slung a leg over Trevor’s stomach and leaned in to kiss him. 

“We thought we might pamper you a little. Adrian was saying he’d really like to take his time over you.”

“Mmmm.” Adrian reached back for the bottle of lube. “I was thinking of holding you ever so close, ever so tight.” 

“Yeah?” Trevor’s voice was breathy. They weren’t directly teasing him anymore but between Sypha’s weight on his belly and Adrian close at his side he felt cocooned.

“Would you like me to fuck you, Trevor?”

“Please…”

Sypha giggled and stroked Trevor’s hair. 

“May I…. occupy him while you warm up?” She waggled her fingers. Adrian shooed her off Trevor.

“Let me at him first.”

Sypha rolled to one side and Adrian leaned right over Trevor, shifting his legs aside to get between them. Adrian leaned in, cupping one hand under Trevor’s head and burying fingers in his hair, pressing their bodies together tightly. 

Trevor couldn’t - wouldn’t even consider - putting up any kind of resistance to this. Adrian’s lips brushed against Trevor’s and Trevor pushed up his hips to meet him there too.

Adrian’s tongue flicked out and then he was pressing their mouths together and kissing Trevor senseless. 

When he let Trevor go, Sypha cupped his face in her hands and pulled him into a slow, sensuous kiss that left them both dreamy-eyed and a little flushed. She nestled in at Trevor’s side and gave him similar treatment, then guided his gaze forward, between his own thighs, where Adrian was dribbling lube on to the fingers of one hand and pressing Trevor’s leg back with the other. 

He slid his finger between Trevor’s buttocks. The fingertip circled, teasingly; pushed, but didn’t penetrate for a little while, until Trevor squirmed and whined in frustration. Then Adrian’s expression of concentration became a razor-sharp grin and Trevor moaned as Adrian’s finger curled into him. 

Sypha stroked Trevor’s hair. She and Adrian both had their eyes fixed on Trevor’s face and when he reacted to Adrian’s second finger slipping into him they shared a satisfied smile. 

“Adrian-” Sypha began.

“Hm, soon, be patient.” Adrian was holding still while Trevor took a couple of gasping breaths. He had never pushed on from this point without Trevor instigating a movement or asking for it; and he was waiting. The only thing that undercut his poise was his tongue worrying the point of one fang. Trevor obliged him, squirming so that he pushed himself down on to the fingers in his arse. He groaned, and Adrian let out an appreciative sigh and began to move again. He looked at Sypha and quirked his head just slightly. Her half of the plan became abruptly clear as she threw one leg over Trevor to straddle his chest.

“Hello handsome.” She purred. She ran her fingernails lightly across his collarbones. 

“Hi.” Trevor breathed. He ran his hands up the underside of her thighs so he could grasp her hips. She was so soft to the touch and his mouth was watering in anticipation. 

She moved forward. Behind her, Adrian started leaving wet kisses on Trevor’s thighs that had the threat of his fangs behind them. His fingers maintained an achingly measured pace that Trevor at once adored and hated him for. 

Sypha took hold of the headboard with one hand, buried the other into Trevor’s hair, and shifted her hips into position. Trevor was too ready to taste her to bother with teasing, and ran the flat of his tongue across her vulva, traced its contours, gently sucked at her clit. She wriggled and sighed, and he dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her bottom and set to work. 

Adrian’s fingers slid out of him for more lube, and when they returned there was a third fingertip along with the first two. The ‘fuck’ that Trevor uttered was muffled against Sypha’s cunt. 

Warmth was beginning to curl in Trevor’s belly. Adrian pushed slowly against him, stroking Trevor’s thigh with his free hand, urging him to relax. 

Sypha began to moan in earnest, grinding on Trevor’s tongue as he lapped at her. She tugged at his hair, and he groaned as the prickle in his scalp seemed to propagate all the way down his spine to his cock.

Adrian moved a little, leaning forward as his fingers pressed deeper still. Trevor could feel him, warm and solid between his thighs, and then his face appeared over Sypha’s shoulder as she leaned back. They both looked down on Trevor. Sypha was panting, flushed, Adrian’s pupils were blown wide and a single bead of sweat was forming on his brow.

Adrian nipped at Sypha’s shoulder and she relaxed into it, letting him kiss her neck and mouth at her earlobe. He looked to Trevor and they seemed to come to the mutual understanding that she needed their focus on her. She writhed against Trevor’s mouth and moaned again. 

Trevor would have complained at Adrian’s fingers leaving him again, but he’d be back, and until then there was the tease of his cock brushing against Trevor’s as he leaned forward to caress Sypha, and the salt-sweet tang of Sypha’s cunt in Trevor’s mouth. 

Adrian had once said; “The sound of Sypha coming is a gift on par with the music of the spheres.” Trevor still took the piss out of him for it, even years on, but the phrase tended to spring to mind when she began to convulse helplessly under both of their attentions. 

Sypha allowed Adrian to help her back to the mattress, where she curled around to kiss Trevor deeply and take the taste of herself from his lips. 

“Now, where was I?” Adrian turned his attention back to Trevor. 

“I think,” Trevor said, pushing his hips up a little to press against Adrian; “You may have been about to fuck me.”

“Aaah, yes.” Adrian leaned right in to give Trevor a kiss that felt like being turned inside out in the best possible way, then grabbed the lube again. 

He tested Trevor, teased him. Two fingers, three again, still slow but moving differently, curling, flexing, stretching. 

“Fuck, Adrian please.” 

“So impatient.” Adrian admonished. “I meant it when I said I was going to take my time.”

He finally dribbled lube on to his own cock and moved himself into position. He kept his eyes on Trevor’s and pressed in, just the head at first.

Trevor gasped. Sensation spread from the nerves Adrian was pressed against through every inch of Trevor’s skin. He took a breath, and relaxed, and yielded to it. 

He squirmed again, and Adrian obliged him by thrusting into him a little further. 

Adrian was breathing heavier, gritting his teeth as he eased in. Trevor was panting too, trying to resist the urge to look away. Having Adrian watching his face so intently was a vulnerability he’d never admit to enjoying, but he knew he was  _ safe _ here, even with all the feeling it stirred in him. 

At long last they were pressed as close as they could be. Adrian leaned over Trevor, crowding him with his body as he began to move in him. 

Sypha had cuddled up right into Trevor’s side and tangled her hand in hair. Her other hand was trailing across his stomach, tracing the lines of old scars. She stroked down across the crest of his hip and rested the tips of her fingers just not  _ quite _ touching his cock. 

Were Trevor not struggling to form thoughts, let alone words, he might have protested what was obviously a conspiracy to drive him absolutely mad. As it was he wriggled, trying to urge Adrian to move faster, or Sypha to move her hand and take hold of him. 

Adrian did not speed up, but he altered his angle and suddenly his every stroke was pressing into the right places to make Trevor see stars. Trevor grabbed at the bedding, at Adrian’s shoulder, at Sypha’s wrist. He gasped and groaned, and Adrian hauled his head up from the mattress to kiss him, his absurd strength leaving Trevor barely on the bed. 

After what seemed like an eternity of being wound up, Sypha finally grasped Trevor’s cock and when he cried out Adrian pinned him back down with a growl and at last increased his pace. 

Trevor was no longer aware of anything but the sensations drawing his belly tight. He was whimpering and clutching at Adrian’s shoulders, and then Adrian was digging his fingernails into Trevor’s hip, and Sypha was pulling his hair, and Trevor was coming.

“Trevor, can I?” Adrian gasped.

“Yes, yes, please-”

And Adrian heaved Trevor up on to his lap and fucked into him. Trevor buried his teeth into Adrian’s shoulder and was rewarded with a gasping whine and a tightening of Adrian’s grip, and moments later Adrian was finally coming, releasing Trevor back to the mattress before collapsing on top of him. 

“God I’m glad I get to watch that.” Sypha had her hand between her legs and a smile on her face.

“Ngh” Adrian responded.

It was about a minute before Trevor dared try to speak. 

“You bastards, I’m going to need a second shower.”

“Wasn’t it worth it.” Sypha was wearing a smile like a Cheshire cat.

“It was worth it.” Adrian pulled Trevor into a cuddle and nibbled at the top of his shoulder. “I love you.”

“I love you but also you are both the absolute worst.” 

“We planned our packing for the museum burglary while you were in the shower too.” Sypha rubbed at Trevor’s stubble with her thumb.

“Anything special we ought to bring?”

“This is not good pillow talk.” Adrian flapped his hand on the bedding between Trevor and Sypha’s faces. “Can we not ruin the afterglow please.”

Sypha giggled. Trevor tried to roll over to face Adrian.

“I’m sure at some point we’ll get to fuck without any impending doom, and then you can bask in my glow all you like.” Trevor grinned. 

Adrian groaned and flopped back on to the pillow.

“Fine, glow enjoyment postponed, I’m going to shower.”

Sypha drove. Trevor called shotgun as they left home and Adrian draped himself across the whole back seat, adding a vibe of sexed-up period drama with his very tight trousers and open-necked shirt. Sypha’s favoured driving music - a playlist she’d named ‘Spooky songs to fuck in the woods to’ - added to the effect. 

She changed to local radio as the city began to encroach on the motorway, and before they’d reached the centre of town, a news bulletin began.

“Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is set to open late today after a break-in overnight.”

“Fuck, what?” Trevor started. Sypha shushed him. 

“Police were called to the museum this morning after staff discovered broken locks when they arrived to start work. It is currently projected that they will be open to visitors again at around one o’clock, but please stay tuned to their social media channels for further updates.”

“We have to assume this is the cult, right?” Trevor twisted in his seat to look at Adrian.

“I suppose so.” Adrian agreed. “Fuck.”

“Shit. I’d better find somewhere to stop.” 

“May as well keep heading up there and we’ll think about it then, Sypha. I don’t think there’s much parking anyway.” Trevor gave her shoulder a squeeze. 

The drive up through the city centre to the museum was painfully slow, but finally they found somewhere they could leave the car for an hour while they had a coffee and tried to think their way through this setback. 

“I think we might as well have a look around anyway.” Sypha said to Trevor while Adrian was buying the drinks. “We’re sure to spot something the police haven’t, some magical signature or a scent or something.”

“Oh wow, one of the baristas has just spilled a pot of tea all over her counter because Adrian’s face distracted her.” Trevor had a great view of the counter from his seat, and Adrian was certainly causing a stir.

“Trevor are you listening?”

“I am, sorry… It hasn’t stopped being funny that regular people just aren’t equipped to deal with how gorgeous our boyfriend is.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me all day.” Adrian arrived at the table with a tray of coffee. 

“Begging you to fuck me doesn’t count?” Trevor tried to affect an expression of innocence. It fell apart when he saw that Adrian was trying to hide a blush behind his hair. 

“I think it’s worth us having a look ‘round anyway, don’t you?” Sypha reached over to take her cappuccino. 

“It will certainly help it feel less like a wasted trip if we can spot anything useful.” Adrian nodded. 

They waited until the police cars had pulled away from the museum, and the staff had opened the front doors. 

It was cool inside, and very quiet since they were the first visitors. Adrian inhaled as they entered, then led the way toward an inconspicuous set of doors that must have led to the storerooms and research spaces of the place. They pretended to look at an exhibit to one side of it.

“Pieter had the same smell on him, it’s the same group.” Adrian muttered.

“They didn’t come in this way but it is how they came out.” Sypha said. “I can try to track the signature but we’ll have to hang about a bit.”

They wandered some, admired the models hanging from the ceiling. The glass canopy over the entrance hall had been smashed, and someone had erected a scaffold in the middle of the floor to put temporary ceilings up. 

“That’s it.” Sypha whispered. “That’s where they left. There was a place with a view nearby, right?”

“Yes. You’re hoping to see the trail from there?” Adrian said. Sypha nodded. 

“Well then.” Trevor took hold of Sypha’s hand beside him. “Time for a romantic vampire-hunting stroll my loves?”

It was a short but steep walk to the tower on the hill nearby. From the top you could see out over the whole city, and Sypha leaned over the edge to squint into the distance. Adrian and Trevor wrapped an arm each around her waist, holding her close. 

“They’re not in the city.” She sighed. “The trail goes further than you can see even from up here.” There was a shake in her voice.

“You know their direction though, we can probably track them down.” Trevor rubbed a comforting hand up her back. Adrian leaned in to place a kiss on her head. 

“We map that trajectory, cross reference with derelict buildings and I’m sure we can find them.”

“We’ve got good information today, we can head home and make good progress with it.” Trevor said. “Let’s get some dinner before we get on our way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was *this* close to publishing this chapter without the plot part at the end but I figured I'd better hold off. Hope it's worth it ;)
> 
> This is my favourite bit of porn I've written to date I think.
> 
> TY to everybody who's left kudos and comments so far, I see you and I love you and you're fueling whatever the fuck this is.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit, meet fan. Abductions, grave robbing, violence - and some things that are going to need a bit of explaining later.

“Alright, there’s the line on the map, there’s the property data mapped on to it.” Trevor handed his laptop over to Adrian. It was late, but neither Sypha or Adrian seemed keen to let a full night’s sleep pass with no further progress.

“And the details show when you hover over, don’t they?”

“Trevor, has this got less illegal since the last time you did it?” Sypha asked.

“Nope, still very illegal, but if they can’t be arsed to close the backdoor to their database I’m not going to argue with them.” He’d met a hacktivist at an extremely weird party at some point who’d taught him a few things, and he’d made use of them mostly to build a database of potential vampire nests to help with hunting. After that, all it had needed to become actually useful was someone with  _ real _ insight into vampire behaviour. 

Adrian had started to highlight promising looking addresses on the list. His nose wrinkled as he concentrated. Trevor gave Sypha’s knee a squeeze. This would take a little time and she was already tense. 

“Cup of tea?” He asked. 

“Yeah I - did we have any of those biscuits left?” She got up and trailed him to the kitchen, started to rummage in the cupboards. 

Trevor put the kettle on and leant back against the worktop. Sypha emerged from a cupboard with half a packet of digestives and a triumphant look. 

“C’mere.” Trevor opened his arms out. She rolled her eyes at him but stepped between his arms and let him pull her into a bear hug. He buried his face in her hair and gave her a squeeze. 

She exhaled, and the tension in her shoulders started to relax. She went up on tiptoes to give Trevor a kiss.

“If they’re already a step ahead of us…” She whispered.

“Yeah I know. We’ve beaten everything we’ve met so far though haven’t we? And Adrian’s so certain it’s destiny.”

Adrian worked on narrowing the list down, and Sypha buried herself in chat threads, asking if anyone in the area had seen anything unusual. 

Trevor went out for a run when the urge to pester them had started to get stronger than he could resist. Halfway round his usual route he bumped into a couple of Sypha’s friends, Ari and Robin, with whom he exchanged a few awkward pleasantries.

“You know, we were talking about you guys the other day!” Robin said. 

“Should I be worried?” Trevor recoiled a little. Being the subject of gossip didn’t typically suit him.

“We were just thinking the other day, there’s definitely been less - you know -  _ nasties _ \- about lately, but we haven’t seen much at all of you!” Robin chirruped. 

“Huh.” Trevor said. 

“Well, if you’re not having to work harder and things are quiet anyway that’s good news, isn’t it.” Ari took Robin’s arm. “Anyway, we’ll let you get on, Trevor, see you soon.” and he guided them away.

Trevor stopped by the shop for more biscuits on the way home. He’d pushed himself on the run back in hopes of turning his brain off for a few minutes, and he was breathless by the time he got up to the office.

He didn’t get a chance to catch his breath. There was a hubbub of voices when he opened the door, and in the main room Sypha and Adrian were trying to calm down two people. Robin and Ari again, Trevor realised. Far less happy than they had been twenty minutes ago on the street. 

“-Snatched right outside the house, and Maxie at the same time!”

“Xan said the alarm ward burned out almost immediately, if no one had been home they wouldn’t have realised he was gone for hours!”

“What did he say the alarm ward was indicating again?” Sypha asked.

“Physical contact from a supernatural creature.” Ari said as if restating it. 

"It's bad news then." Trevor stepped into the room fully, standing close behind Adrian. 

"Bad, yes." Adrian turned away from the rushed discussion around the desk to look Trevor over. "And you  _ smell _ bad." He said with a smile. Trevor pulled a face. 

"Can either of you make any suggestions about where we start with this?" Sypha asked. Trevor rubbed the back of his head. 

"You can't trace them magically?" 

"I'm assuming if they managed to break Marius's wards they'll be able to cover their tracks." She had a hand on her hip and her lips were tight. 

"We'll be able to sniff them out somehow." Adrian assured her.

Sypha nodded. 

"Is there anything else we need to know?" 

"Gods, I don't even know, Sypha I'm so  _ frightened _ , what if…" Robin was all but vibrating with tension. 

“Me too.” Sypha took Robin’s hands in her own. “All I can promise you is that we’re going to do our best. You should go home and try to get some sleep, both of you. We’ll keep you up to date on our progress.”

Adrian showed them out, and Sypha slumped down on the chair behind the desk. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump a little.

“If this is another sales email I swear-” She grumbled as she pulled it out. Her brow furrowed as she read the message, then -just as Adrian came back into the room - she jumped out of the seat again, as if struck by lightning. “Get changed, get your kit together, both of you!”

“What is it?” Adrian asked as she hurried them out of the room toward the stairs. 

“Someone’s seen people wandering around in Highgate Cemetery using magic lights. Knowing what Marius and Maxie’s specialties are - it has to be connected.”

“Highgate - so it’s connected to the Dracula stuff too?” Trevor was first through the flat door and kept moving even as he tried to get a handle on what was going on. 

“Convenient if it is.” Sypha grabbed some water bottles from the kitchen as Trevor threw off his running clothes and put on the army surplus gear he wore for hunting. Adrian picked up his sword and coat and was all but ready to go.

“Anything else to pick up?” He asked.

“Holy water and spare stakes in the bottom of the wardrobe.” Trevor told him. 

Sypha pulled her magic-imbued traditional robes out of her own wardrobe and slung them over her arm. 

“Trevor can you drive?”

“Yeah, of course.” He finished strapping a holster full of stakes to himself and grabbed his car keys from the side, then his kit bag from beside the door. 

“Got everything?” Adrian asked, almost perfectly composed but for a twitching muscle in his jaw. Trevor and Sypha nodded, and they all headed down the stairs, out of the office and down to the street.

Trevor’s car was kind of a piece of shit compared to Sypha’s, but it had enough room for all the gear he liked to have to hand. They piled in and set off through the dark streets. It had started to rain so he dared not go too fast, but Sypha checking her phone and chewing her lip beside him was no help to his concentration. 

When it started ringing and she all but jumped out of her seat.

“Hello?” She was gripping her phone so tight that her knuckles were white. “Shit, this afternoon? … Thank you, yeah.” She stared at the screen before hitting the icon to drop the call.

“Sypha?” Adrian leaned forward. 

“The teacher - the blood sacrifice - she’s been abducted from right outside the school. I-It feels like they’re so far ahead of us, Adrian...” She trailed off. 

“Can you put that to the back of your mind while we deal with this?” 

She looked back at him with a furrow in her brow.

“I’m not going to just give up on saving Marius and Maxie.”

“I know that.” He reached a hand over the back of her seat to squeeze her shoulder. “But we don’t know what’s ahead of us, we can’t afford to have you distracted.”

Her furrowed brow turned into a full-blown scowl. 

“I am not distracted.”

“Alright then. They can’t stay ahead of us for long, I assure you.”

She tensed as they got closer to the cemetery, eyes searching the street like a cat hearing something small and squeaky somewhere in the room. 

“I was expecting them to cover their tracks better than this.” Adrian said from the back seat. 

“What is it?” Trevor knew he was missing something.

“Absolutely reeks of magic.” Adrian muttered. 

“It’s Speaker magic. They’re trying to leave us a trail.” Sypha was peering through the car windows, almost crawling onto the dashboard to try and see what was going on. 

“Trevor, stop here!” She said. 

He pulled up at the kerb and she immediately jumped out, throwing on her robes. Trevor got out and opened the boot as Adrian unfolded himself from the car with his ordinary, extraordinary elegance. 

Trevor followed them to the fence. 

“Adrian, it’ll be quieter if you drop us over…” Sypha said. Adrian grabbed her round the waist and levitated them both over the fence. His eyes glittered in the dark when he turned back to look at Trevor. 

“Come on then.” Trevor whispered, and in a moment Adrian was back on the outside of the fence, sweeping Trevor off his feet and into the cemetery. 

“Hmm, about a six out of ten for romance, the weather is spoiling it a bit.” Trevor said. Adrian rolled his eyes, but gave Trevor a kiss on the nose before putting him down. 

Now Sypha was satisfied they were with her, she set off into the dark, following something Trevor couldn’t see. 

The rain covered the sound of her robes rustling in the grass, and the slight jangling of the hardware holding Trevor and Adrian’s weapons in place. The overall effect was oddly peaceful, in spite of the murderous set to Sypha and Adrian’s shoulders up ahead. 

“The trail ends here.” Sypha said, stopping in front of a grave. She tilted her head and; “Ah. There you are.”

Adrian did the same and nodded when he - saw? - Trevor supposed - whatever she had seen.

“What am I missing?”

Adrian took Trevor’s hand and pulled him in front of him. 

“Follow the line of that yew tree.” He pointed in front of them. “Up from the ground, then there's a break, do you see it?”

“I-yeah, but…” Then Trevor’s perspective twisted as his eye caught what was  _ wrong _ with the picture. A handful of the tree’s twigs came to an unnaturally sharp stop, right where you’d stop being able to see them if they were going behind, for example, a large, gothic mausoleum. Just like the large, gothic mausoleum that had abruptly tilted into view.

“Ugh, what the - “ Trevor leaned back into Adrian as he fought the queasy feeling that gripped his stomach. 

“Can’t see it until you know it’s there. Are you alright?” Adrian rubbed Trevor’s arm. 

“Yeah - that’s so fucking weird.” Trevor sized up the building, looked at the disturbed ground around the entrance. “We’re expecting this to be full of vampires, and we’ve been up all day. Is there another option than a frontal assault?” He thought out loud. 

The air around Adrian shimmered as he whizzed round the building.

“No other way in.”

“Full frontal it is then. Ready?” Trevor took hold of the door. Sypha raised her arms.

“Ready.”

  
  


There was a muddled trail of footprints in the dust on the floor inside, but there didn’t seem to be anyone coming to investigate the horrible noise the door had made as Trevor hauled it open. Sypha stepped in and headed directly to where the trail disappeared into a darkened doorway.

“There’s something big going on down there.” She said. Her hair was starting to stand on end in spite of the rain in it. She conjured a spark into her hand and set off downstairs.

“Ugh, the hair  _ again _ ?” Adrian said, wringing the water out of his own hair onto the floor.

“Hoping to meet a new beau in this crypt are we?” Trevor winked before following Sypha.

“Worked for you, didn’t it?” Adrian said, somehow right behind Trevor’s ear. 

“I wasn’t expecting to find  _ anyone _ down there, it’s not the same.”

“Hush, you two, we’re getting close.” Sypha called back. 

Trevor unhooked the whip from his belt, hefted it in his hand and rubbed his thumb over the Belmont family crest embossed on the handle. He was beginning to be able to see a light at the bottom of the stairs, and hear hushed voices. 

Sypha stopped them several steps from the bottom. She didn’t say anything, but searched Trevor and Adrian’s faces in the gloom. Trevor glanced over his shoulder in time to catch Adrian’s sharp nod to her, and the glint of reflected light in his eyes.

“All guns blazing?” Trevor whispered. She nodded and turned toward the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, calling fireballs into her hands as she leapt down the last few stairs and entered whatever room was on the other side of that doorway. 

Trevor and Adrian jumped down and fanned out behind her. 

Trevor took in the scene as quickly as he could. Two vampires beside the door, two dragging a pair of disheveled Speakers off to one side, one delving into a huge stone sarcophagus in the centre of the room.

Sypha clapped the fireballs in her hands into either side of the unfortunate vampire nearest her when she came through the door. She held her hands in place, grimacing, until a gurgling cry came from its throat, and its body went limp. Adrian went for the other guard and punched him into the wall.

Trevor ran toward the Speakers. The room was too small for the whip to be much use, so he hooked it back on to his belt as he tackled the nearest vampire away from the human she was shoving. He drew a knife, but she got an elbow between them in time to roll him off, grabbing at his hair and trying to pin him down with a knee to the chest. The knife skittered from his hand, but he was ready. He grabbed a stake instead and drove it into her chest. She let out an inhuman snarl before her face withered, and her body toppled off Trevor.

He’d let himself be turned away from the Speakers and their other captor and couldn’t anticipate being grappled by him from behind as he sat up. They rolled, and he could see that Sypha had reached Maxie and Marius, and was laying reassuring hands on them. 

Trevor was beginning to panic, struggling to free himself from the grasp of the vampire that’d taken hold of him, when he was suddenly freed, and the vampire was a full five feet away, half buried under a snarling mass of white fur. Adrian, wolf-shaped, and growling like a beast possessed, had hurled himself at Trevor’s captor, and now tore his head off in two bloody bites of his jaws.

“Sypha!” Trevor turned to see where the cry came from in time to see Sypha react, hurling a spear of ice over his head to skewer their last opponent.

An urn rolled out of his now-lifeless hands and on to the floor. Adrian took off after it, but moments before he got there, another vampire darted out of a narrow tunnel to one side, grabbed the urn and disappeared back into the dark, with the wolf close behind.

By the time Trevor was back on his feet, Sypha, Marius, and Maxie were clinging to one another; tears of relief in their eyes.

“I didn’t know if anyone knew we were even taken; I’m so happy you’re here-”

“Marius was certain they’d broken every spell he had, they were about to…”

“I know, I know, I was so frightened we wouldn’t find you in time.” Sypha was visibly shaking - all of them were - and Trevor went to sit at her back in hopes of offering some comfort.

It was only a couple of minutes before Adrian reappeared, human-shaped again, blood smeared across his face where it had been on his fur.

“Did you catch up with her?” Sypha stood, hands still on her friends’ shoulders.

“No, she escaped.” He looked behind himself down the tunnel. “Turned into a swarm of fucking bats and left through a storm drain.” His jaw was clenched and Trevor could see the haze of red across his eyes even in the gloom.

“Hey.” Trevor got up and went over to Adrian. “Take a deep breath for me?” Adrian glowered, but he did take a deep breath and drop his shoulders a little. 

“Still a chance this wasn’t Dracula?” Trevor suggested. Adrian treated him to the tiniest hint of a smile. 

“Only the very slimmest, but I suppose I ought to check.” He swept over to the sarcophagus and looked into it. He reached in and pulled something metallic from it. “Slim has become nonexistent I’m afraid. Those were my father’s remains.”

“Shit.” Trevor agreed. 

“Sypha, he was a wolf a few minutes ago right?” Maxie asked as Sypha led them over to where Adrian and Trevor were standing. 

“Uh-” Sypha fidgeted and furrowed her brow.

“And his father’s remains have been stolen by a cult who are hoping to resurrect Dracula.”

“They don’t usually try to resurrect the nice parent.” Trevor said.

“You know what,” Sypha glared at Trevor. “I’ll explain on the way back, let’s get you back to the car.” Thankfully, nobody argued with her. Sypha gave Trevor a significant look as they got back outside the mausoleum, and he turned and stopped in front of Adrian with a hand against his chest. 

“Little clean-up before we get back in the car?”

“Hm? Oh- my face.” Adrian dropped his head.

“Yeah it’s a bit embarrassing to have blood all over you when you see people you barely know.” Trevor guided Adrian to his knees and rubbed the gore off as best he could with hands wetted in the grass. “Hang on, I bet I’ve got a tissue here somewhere.” He rummaged in his pockets and found a manky scrap of tissue paper, shedding and full of holes, but absorbent, and not apparently used for anything else yet.

Adrian took it from him and scrubbed at his face himself.

“Have I got everything?”

“No, you’ll need a mirror for that, but you look less like someone who just ripped a guy’s head off with his teeth, so we should avoid being pulled over on the way home.” 

Adrian gave him a tiny smile. 

“You still smell bad from earlier.”

“So at least you’re not the only one who’ll be unpleasant to be in a car with. Come on, they’ll be waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ty again lovely readers for your encouragement, and to my spouse for proofreading.
> 
> This chapter felt like it took longer to post but I'm not tracking how long I'm going between updates so I might be imagining it. Certainly I have been spending lots of time playing animal crossing rather than writing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the rescue mission.

Adrian sat silent in the passenger seat the whole way home while Sypha explained the basics of his heritage and his chosen destiny. 

Trevor could see the curiosity on Marius and Maxie’s faces in the rear-view mirror, and was grateful they managed to rein it in and not ask the hundreds of questions that must be buzzing through their minds. Adrian had his arms wrapped tight around himself and was grinding his teeth just slightly. Trevor wouldn’t have bet on whether it was because he had failed to catch the vampire stealing his father’s remains, or because of the conversation in the back of the car outing him. 

“If I’m honest,” Marius said, when Sypha finished her explanation. “I’m a little surprised no one put two and two together and realised your Adrian was Alucard.”

“Some of the people closer to us have, but I didn’t want it to be common knowledge until the Dracula part was dealt with.” Sypha shrugged. “Hopefully we’re getting close to that now.”

They got home, and Trevor put the kettle on while Sypha got the spare room ready and Adrian went to wash all the blood off himself. 

“I snore, so I can take the sofa.” Marius offered, as he, Sypha and Maxie left the spare room. 

“I’m a heavy sleeper, especially after that kind of spellcasting, I bet I’ll be asleep before you get going.” Maxie patted his arm. They all sat down on the sofa, looking absolutely shattered, a full set of dark circles under their eyes. 

Trevor delivered the teas and excused himself to go take a shower, now he could hear Adrian was finished in the bathroom. 

“Hey.” He said, when he came into the bedroom. Adrian was sitting on the bed in a fluffy robe, with his hair wrapped in a towel. 

“Shower’s all yours.” Adrian said. “You owe me one for getting all that blood in my hair to save you, by the way.” He shot Trevor a half-smile.

“I know, feel free to cash in the sexual favour any time.” Trevor yawned. “Maybe in the morning though. And after they’ve gone home, probably.”

Adrian only managed a weak laugh. 

“Tired?” Trevor sat down beside him on the bed. Adrian leaned against him. Trevor leaned in and breathed. Adrian’s soap smelled woody and herbal, of half of home.

“Mm, very. If you’re fidgety tonight I might make you sleep on the floor.”

“As if Sypha isn’t always twice as fidgety!”

“She takes up less space.” Adrian batted his eyelashes as if he was being perfectly innocent. 

“Bollocks does she.” Trevor laughed as he got up to get himself in the shower. As he closed the door he caught a flash of a toothy smile. 

Marius half-carried Sypha to bed when she fell asleep on the sofa. Despite his complaints about being tired, Adrian was still twitchy, sitting in bed making scratchy doodles in his sketchbook and muttering under his breath. Trevor went to collect Sypha from Marius, sweeping her up into his arms in spite of her sleepy protests. 

“Thanks, Marius. There are extra blankets and pillows in the airing cupboard, if you guys need them.” 

Marius nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. 

“Someone needs her beauty sleep.” Trevor said.

“Fuck off.” Sypha mumbled. 

“Have it your way.” Trevor chucked her on to the bed, knocking the pencil from Adrian’s hands.

“Trevor!”

“You need to put it away and sleep anyway, you grumpy bastard, come on.” Trevor leaned over to take the sketchbook from him too. Adrian gave it up with a dramatic huff.

Trevor shed his pajama bottoms on to the floor and snuggled under the covers, looping his arm across Adrian’s abdomen as Sypha threw off her clothes and went to brush her teeth. When she came back she curled up on Adrian’s other side with her back to him. He curled around her, and Trevor reached over him so he could hold on to them both.

Morning came too soon. Everyone still had dark shadows under their eyes, and Trevor wondered if any of them were in a fit state for the conversation they had to have. Maxie had confirmed something Trevor had wondered about on the way home - the vampires hadn’t expected anyone to come after them, and they’d got lucky having someone not in the room who could escape. 

They didn’t seem to be prepared for anything much to go wrong, and had talked freely about their plans and arrangements with no regard for their human audience - right down to the name of the industrial estate where the other person the cult had abducted was being held, and the designated night of her sacrifice.

Adrian was in a noticeably better mood as they sent Marius and Maxie on their way with one of Marius’s housemates. 

“Feeling like yesterday didn’t go so badly after all?” Sypha said, as he smiled at the match between yesterday’s notes and the ones he’d just taken. 

“Losing the urn was a setback, but with this information we can swoop in and take out their key sacrifice before they can use her.” He tossed his hair and grinned. 

Trevor looked up from his own notes. Adrian didn’t seem to have noticed the tension in Sypha’s voice in his own relief, but his grin faded when he saw the tight expression on her face. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I just - mm.” She curled in on herself in her seat, mouth twisting.

“Sypha?” Trevor turned and rested a hand on her arm. She glanced up at Adrian from under her eyelashes, then dropped her chin back down. 

“I’m  _ frightened _ Adrian.”

“Surely you’ve been frightened before?” He came close and dropped to one knee in front of the sofa, took her hand. 

“Not like this. Not the-” She waved her free hand, searching for the words. “The existential dread, I suppose. Like, I’ve been frightened about things we were going up against and I’ve been scared for my life in fights sometimes but…”

“Is it because it was people you know?” Trevor ventured. He was having trouble imagining what other reason Sypha would be so scared. He’d refused every offer he’d had to work with someone before she came along out of fear they might get hurt, but had never had a second’s doubt that she could manage anything at all that might be thrown at them. 

“It’s because they’re people I know should be able to look after themselves.” Her hand tightened on Adrian’s. “I’ve been on magician’s residentials with Marius, his defensive magic is the best in a generation, far better than mine, and he couldn’t - they got him in spite of it and it was only by chance anyone noticed he was missing soon enough to do anything about it!” 

“That ability with his magic is why he was a target - they needed people who work defensive magic to undo the wards around the tomb - They’ve no reason to come after you.” 

“If they wanted to weaken your position, or get at you somehow, Adrian…”

“They wouldn’t.” His tone was absolute, final. “They work in service of Dracula. They may not be on  _ my  _ side, but they would not dare to harm anyone dear to House Dracul.”

Sypha didn’t look convinced, but she did look, as far as Trevor could tell, finished with the conversation. 

“Adrian, do you want to take a look at the floorplans for that unit and start making an attack plan?” Trevor suggested. Adrian ran a hand through his hair. 

“Certainly.” He strode back over to the laptop. Trevor wrapped his arms around Sypha and pulled her in close. He placed a kiss on her head. 

“Hey. You know what they say about a good offence?” He whispered to her.

“Hm?”

“It’s the best defence. So yeah, you don’t have dozens of wards and bindings at your disposal, but the second they laid hands on you, you’d set them on fire, right?”

“I would.” there was a hint of a smile in her voice. “I’m still scared. It’s all so much.”

“Yeah, it’s not like what we’ve done before. We’re all going to take care of each other though, aren’t we.”

“I’ll definitely set fire to anyone who lays hands on you.”

“Atta girl.” Trevor smiled. She cuddled in closer to him, swinging her legs across his lap. He ruffled her hair. “Shall we help Mr Transylvania 1476 with the heist planning?”

“We should, shouldn’t we...”

They pulled chairs in around Adrian and started discussing the plan he’d noted down already. 

A couple of hours got it looking like something they could pull off, and Trevor insisted on a break for lunch. Sypha was still tense. She pressed herself against Adrian as Trevor went to the kitchen and caught his mouth in a quick kiss before nestling into his shoulder.

They ate and got back to work, and it took until Trevor’s eyes were bleary with staring at the screen and the notes for it to feel like the plan was coming together. Sypha stretched and yawned. 

“Can anyone be bothered to cook dinner? Because I can’t be bothered to cook dinner.”

“Chippie tea?” Trevor suggested.

“Oooh you’re a terrible influence, Trevor Belmont.” She jumped up from her seat. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, don’t forget the hot sauce in the fridge door.”

She threw on her coat and swept out of the flat before anything more could be said. 

“She seems to be in a better mood?” Trevor suggested.

“Did I say the wrong thing earlier?” 

“I don’t think there was a right thing to say.”

“You seemed to manage.” Adrian pouted. Trevor bumped his shoulder.

“I got lucky. You’d eliminated one of the possibilities.” 

Adrian snorted and got up to go to the kitchen. He clattered about collecting plates and cutlery as if he couldn’t have been perfectly silent. Trevor got up and followed him. 

“Drama queen.” He came up behind Adrian and rested his chin on his shoulder. Adrian turned to face him. 

“Hello shortarse.” 

“You’re exactly one inch taller than me, dickhead.” Trevor groaned. Adrian grinned. Trevor gave him a kiss, happy to at least have made him smile. 

Sypha returned with dinner, and the conversation managed to stay away from the scale of the job ahead of them for nearly the whole meal. Trevor was pouring the last handful of crispy chip bits onto his plate when Adrian placed his hands on the table and cleared his throat. 

“We don’t know where in the building they’ve got her, we’ll have to be careful not to employ too destructive a distraction.”

“How’s the weather looking, are we expecting rain?” Trevor asked.

“Hm?” Adrian frowned.

“Roofs develop leaks. If it’s raining when we go, we could pour holy water through the roof, whoever investigates it gets hurt - Bob’s your uncle!”

Adrian’s lips quirked, then he let out an actual chuckle. 

“I’m afraid he isn’t.”

“I know you know that’s just a figure of speech.” Trevor rolled his eyes. Adrian gave him a big, bright smile. 

“It does look like there’s rain forecast.” Sypha said.

“That’s in my pocket then.” Trevor started collecting the empty plates. “So that leaves us with: distraction, barge in, destroy some blood-sucking bastards, find the teacher, get her out. Anything else to cover?”

“I’d like to know how many of them we’re expecting to be in there.” Sypha frowned at the remains of her fish.

“Based on how little other nocturnal activity we’ve had the last couple of months I’d expect the organisation as a whole has drawn in most of the vampires and night creatures in the country, plus some from further afield.” Adrian said.

“It’s a tiny unit though. Unless they’ve got sewer access or something, they don’t have room for more than, I don’t know, twenty guys?”

“That would be manageable.” Sypha chewed at the edge of her thumbnail and sighed. “I don’t think I can do any more today.” 

“We’ll have time to finalise things tomorrow, right Adrian?”

“Certainly.”

“We’ll pick something totally brainless to do for the rest of the evening then.” Trevor smiled. Sypha got up and gave him a kiss. 

“Dishes first?” 

“Of course!” Trevor raised a hand to his chest in mock outrage. Adrian leaned back in his seat. 

“Ah, of course, because Trevor Belmont has never lived in squalor.” He raised an eyebrow. 

“I was living alone! And you know how quickly I got my shit together once I had someone to impress.” That got another laugh out of Adrian. Sypha rolled her eyes and headed for the bedroom.

“I’ll be right back.” She called over her shoulder. 

Things were tidy in a matter of minutes. Sypha came back from the bedroom with a crochet project she’d been working on longer than Trevor and Adrian had known her and settled on the sofa. Trevor cuddled in beside her on one side and started flicking through TV channels, looking for something relatively low effort to watch. Adrian leaned his back onto Sypha’s other shoulder, lolling his legs over the arm of the sofa and ignoring the screen for a book.

Trevor settled on some dumb action film they’d all seen at least three times and reached an arm round to ruffle Sypha’s hair. 

Sypha was yawning before the film was over and took herself to bed. Adrian hadn’t been paying attention in the first place, and Trevor had zoned out and was mostly staring at the ceiling. 

“We should just go to bed.” 

“I’ll be with you shortly.” 

In the bedroom, Sypha was lying under the covers in the dark doing something on her phone. 

“Thought you were sleepy?”

“So did I.” Sypha flopped her arms down onto the covers. “As soon as I put my head down I just couldn’t stop thinking about it all. How much we can’t prepare for, how little time we have…”

“Mmmfhg?” Trevor tried to say around a mouthful of toothbrush. Sypha pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

“Okay, try again when you’re done with that.”

Trevor finished brushing his teeth and snuggled up next to her under the duvet. 

“Reassurance or distraction?” He asked. She rolled to face him. There was a worried little wrinkle between her eyebrows and a hint of a pout in her lips. She looked at him and stroked his face, then moved forward into a slow, careful kiss.

“I’d like to just switch my brain off for a little bit.” She whispered.

“I think that can be arranged.” Trevor replied. He slipped one hand under her thigh and rolled them both so she was under him. “Shall I go collect Adrian so we can both help?”

She giggled.

“Many hands make light work, right?”

Before either of them could move, Adrian came into the room.

“Ah, speak of the devil.” Trevor knelt back and twisted to look over his shoulder. “Our beloved is hoping for some help relaxing, could you lend a hand?”

“Or mouth, or dick, I’m not fussy.” Sypha added. Adrian laughed. He went into the bathroom and squeezed some toothpaste onto his toothbrush. 

“You get started and I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

Trevor threw off the duvet so Adrian could see what they were doing, and kissed Sypha deeply. She responded in kind and wrapped her thighs around Trevor’s hips, buried her hands in his hair.

Trevor ran his hands across her body. He teased fingertips across her breasts, traced the line of her waist, stroked his palm around her thigh to cup one of her buttocks. She sighed into his mouth and arched her back to press into him closer. She scraped her teeth across his bottom lip and chuckled when that drew a groan from him. 

Trevor angled himself back a little so he could stroke his other hand down her inner thigh and note how wet she was already. He just barely brushed her clit with his fingertips, and smiled at the happy, expectant little noise she made. He slipped one finger into her and she squirmed on to it. He curled the finger into her, willing himself to keep it slow, to tease and tire her out. 

Adrian silently appeared beside them.

“Where would you like me?” He asked Sypha. She reached out toward him.

“Come here.”

He sat beside her on the bed and let her entwine her hands in his hair and press their lips together, let her lick into his mouth and bite his lip. He splayed one hand across her stomach, limiting how much she could buck her hips into Trevor’s hand until she whined and tried to push Adrian to release her.

“If you want us to blow your mind, maybe you should just let us do what we’re going to do?” He suggested, stroking her ribs. She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, then took a breath and very consciously relaxed under Adrian’s hand. 

“For this time then.” She breathed, fluttering her eyelids closed. 

Adrian kissed her again. His hair was in the way of Trevor seeing what he was doing exactly, but the way she moved in response to it suggested it was working for her. 

Trevor slipped a second finger into her and started to move himself further down the bed. As he did, Adrian shifted a little, and his cock caught Trevor’s eye; resting, hard as he’d ever seen it against Sypha’s hip. Trevor reached out and took it in his hand. Adrian glanced over his shoulder, apparently scandalised. 

“I thought we were focusing our attentions on Sypha this evening.”

“One; we are, I can do more than one thing at a time, and two; it’s just right there, you expect me not to want to touch it?” Trevor moved his hands on both of them to punctuate his point. Adrian hissed and dropped his head back a little, and Sypha sighed happily. She stroked Adrian’s face with a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Let him, Adrian, I enjoy watching your face when he’s touching you.”

Adrian went bright pink and looked at Trevor in desperation - as if he was going to get anything but more teasing from that quarter. Trevor grinned and lowered his mouth to Sypha’s cunt while pulling his hand up the length of Adrian’s cock. 

They both moaned. Trevor’s heart soared with adoration for them. He savoured the way Sypha tasted, the tug of desire in his belly as she pushed back against his face, and the sweet whine Adrian made for him when he rubbed his thumb in the right place.

Adrian grasped Trevor’s wrist and pulled his hand away. 

“Sypha, let me behind you.” Adrian’s voice was rough and his lip curled back from his teeth. Trevor shifted, slipped his fingers out of her so Sypha could move forward and let Adrian tuck himself flush against her back. He ran his hands over her, rested his face on the top of her head and inhaled. 

Trevor watched. Sypha was still, head turned to one side where she’d watched Adrian move, eyelids closed, a flush across her face and chest, moisture glistening on her pubic hair.

Adrian’s eyes were screwed shut and his jaw was tensed. They’d overwhelmed him. He ran one hand up into Sypha’s hair and tugged on it, and she followed, grabbed at that hand.

“Gently, please.” She whispered. Adrian’s eyes opened like he was waking from a dream.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

“Save that sort of rough treatment for me.” Trevor said. Adrian gave him a radiant, toothy smile. He kissed Sypha’s head where his hand had just been, stroked over her body again and guided her thighs apart. His fingers delved into her and she gasped, arching her back. 

Adrian’s fingertips circled her clit. He flashed a significant look at Trevor.

Trevor moved himself back in close and slipped his fingers back into Sypha’s cunt. Adrian had one arm braced across her chest so she couldn’t move and she was clinging to it, digging her fingernails into his forearm as she moaned and squirmed under their ministrations. 

Sypha was clenching around Trevor’s fingers and he increased his pace, rocking his hand into her in time with the movements of Adrian’s hand. It only took a few more minutes until she was coming, gasping and writhing in their arms. 

Adrian’s grip on her relaxed. 

“Mind more quiet?”

“Nhm- not enough, Trevor, come here.” She beckoned vaguely.

“Where do you want me?”

“Just-just come-” She grabbed and tugged at him until he was on his knees, leaning over her and Adrian both. She hooked her heels behind Trevor’s thighs and reached up to kiss him. “Mm, you taste good.” She smiled

“I taste of you.” He whispered back. Adrian reached out a hand from behind her to hold Trevor’s chin. 

“May I?” He asked. Trevor leaned across Sypha’s shoulder and let Adrian take a taste of her from his lips. 

Sypha squeezed Adrian’s thighs, Trevor’s ribs. 

“Adrian, come alongside me here.” She rearranged them to her satisfaction, so Trevor was above her and Adrian’s hips were beside her head. 

Trevor let her pull him close, shift him into position between her legs and guide him into her. He sighed as he began to move with her. 

Once they’d established a rhythm she reached for Adrian, where he was reclined next to her. She pulled his hips towards her and ran her hand up the inside of his thigh. Adrian gasped as she ran her tongue up the length of him and wrapped her lips around the head of his cock. 

They were always a vision together and Trevor was sure the show would have him losing what little control he had too soon to meet Sypha’s needs. He tore his eyes away and changed the angle of his thrust in hope it would catch her up, that he wouldn’t finish before she was ready. 

She clenched around him and moaned again. Even looking away from them, the noises Adrian was making were giving Trevor far too much to work with, and when he did open his eyes, Adrian’s face was flushed and breathtakingly beautiful.

“Oh god, Sypha I’m so close already.” Trevor gasped. She didn’t even let Adrian out of her mouth to respond, just winked at Trevor from exactly where she was. 

She did stop what she was doing a few minutes later to bear down on Trevor, gasping and clutching the bedding.

“Oh, oh yes, aahhh…” Her thighs gripped his hips and she arched her back into him, a wave of tension building and breaking through her. Trevor let go, grabbed her hips and thrust into her, the earlier intention to tease and take it slow lost in a frantic moment of heat clutching his insides and tearing through him. 

He whimpered when Sypha pulled away, drew him to one side to kiss him. Her eyes were hazy, but her hand drifted between her legs and it was clear she wasn’t finished yet. 

“Adrian.” She turned her head to look at him. “One more.”

He nodded, shifted toward the middle of the mattress as she got up and turned. She mounted him, and they let out mirrored sighs as she sank slowly onto his cock. Trevor curled an arm under his head and trailed fingers over them both, from Sypha’s hip to Adrian’s shoulder, and they shared a tender look between all three of them before Sypha focused her gaze on Adrian’s face and started to grind her hips against him.

His back arched and she leaned forward to pin his arms against the pillows, rocked back and forth, shifted her hands to the headboard instead. Adrian curled up toward her, kissed her ribs and nipped at her breasts, then she moaned and he let his head flop back with a gasp.

His knuckles were white where he was gripping her thigh. That was bound to leave bruises, but neither of them seemed to have noticed. 

Sypha seemed to find her rhythm and her breath became more harsh, tension building in her muscles as she moved. 

“Ahh, yes, yes I’m- Haah…”

And Adrian responded in kind, gasping a litany of;

“Please, yes, Sypha I-”

Her brow furrowed and she screwed her eyes shut as it built. Then the thread that had pulled her taught snapped and she shook with the release, and Adrian cried out and bucked under her as he came too. 

He guided her back to the mattress and Trevor propped himself up to say;

“That what you needed?”

Sypha smiled a fucked-out Cheshire cat smile and just about managed to look at him from under heavy eyelids.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She hummed happily and dragged herself off to the bathroom on unsteady legs. 

“God she’s incredible.” Trevor said, not expecting a response.

“Sometimes I think she’s going to tear me to shreds and I’d thank her for it.” Adrian flopped back into the pillows.

He grabbed a box of tissues from the bedside table and they cleaned themselves up in time for Sypha to come back to bed, hazy and relaxed and slightly flushed. She curled herself around Adrian’s side and was asleep in minutes. Adrian stroked her head.

“I wish I could prove to her that she’s safe.” He was frowning slightly.

“We live a dangerous existence, I’d be more worried if none of us were scared.” Trevor leaned back to turn off the lamp, then snuggled in himself. “Besides, we rob them of a key part of their spells tomorrow right, then we can have a proper break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not as happy with this chapter as the previous ones and idek why.  
> REGARDLESS it exists and for that we are thankful


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time has come for the decisive strike against those who wish to resurrect Dracula, and the plan goes off almost without a hitch.

They decamped down to the office in the morning to search through Adrian’s books for some idea how much opposition they might expect to meet. They were lounging around the desk consuming endless cups of tea when Sypha’s phone buzzed and she went to the door. 

“Laurel, hiya!”

“I got your location!” Laurel’s voice drifted down the hallway. 

“Oh fantastic, come through, I’m sure the boys will want to hear about it. Tea?”

“Absolutely.” They rummaged about in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, looking through Sypha’s formidable collection of herbal brews. They came into the main room and Trevor caught a waft of something floral from Laurel’s mug. She put it down on the desk and pulled a bundle of paper from her bag.

“Can I spread this out here?”

“Ah-certainly, let me just-” Adrian jumped up and scooped the books off the desk. Laurel spread out her charts and snatched a couple of small books from the top of the stack in Adrian’s arms to use as paperweights.

She stood up, then paused, looking round the room. 

“Sypha… This is all - I think I know more than you wanted me to.”

“What’s - I mean, is there something in particular?” Sypha’s face was tense as she turned to Laurel.

“The type of energy that’s channeling through this place on that night is going to be something else… you know I don’t want to pry, but I am scared for you. All of you…”

“Well - I do know what I’m doing? Does that help? At all?” Sypha wrinkled her nose and gave Laurel her biggest, pleadingest eyes - the ones Trevor could never say no to. 

“I don’t know.” Laurel sighed. “The perspective I have on what you seem to be mixed up in… I mean, do you have the option not to?”

“It’s kind of a ‘fate of the world’ sort of deal. Even if it wasn’t…” Sypha leaned against the desk. “It’s complicated. It’s... family stuff for Adrian, so it is for Trevor and I too.”

“Fate of the world type family stuff?” Laurel frowned, then the blood drained from her face as her brain delivered an explanation she didn’t want. “Oh you are  _ kidding _ , he’s  _ Alucard!?  _ You’re  _ fucking _ Alucard ?! ” Sypha shushed her immediately. 

“Please don’t tell anyone else, we don’t know how many other groups and beings are out there that have a vested interest in having him not around.”

“Of course I’m not going to tell anyone, oh my gods…” Laurel turned and leaned against the desk alongside Sypha. She looked Adrian up and down. “It does explain how he’s so preposterously beautiful. Wait,” She turned to where Trevor was trying to shrink into the armchair. “Is there something up with Trevor too then? Is he a wolfman?” Sypha laughed out loud.

“I’m not a wolfman. I don’t even have any magic powers!” Trevor yelped. Adrian didn’t quite suppress a giggle. 

“Mm, he  _ is _ hairy, but not quite that hairy.” He flashed Trevor, then Laurel a dazzling grin. 

“He’s the last son of an eight-hundred year old monster-hunting dynasty.” Sypha said. “Does it help to know who I’m undertaking this all with?”

“Not at all.” Laurel said. “But I knew I wasn’t going to change your mind if you were sure of yourself.” She bumped Sypha’s shoulder with her fist. “So, your coordinates.”

Everyone gathered around her as she turned back to her papers. 

She didn’t need to, but explained the process of backward-engineering the celestial conditions needed to achieve the resurrection of an ancient power to point to the exact place the energies would align. 

It was a field. The Ordnance Survey map marked a small earthwork in it, but there was no evidence it had been notable to anybody at all during the last millennium. 

“Not likely to attract any attention out there at least.” Trevor said. 

“I was expecting something more, really.” Sypha flopped her head on to Trevor’s shoulder.

“My father does usually have more flair for the dramatic, I’d have guessed some sort of haunted old manor at least.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but that’s where the stars point you.” Laurel shrugged and took a glug of tea. 

Once Laurel finished her cup of tea she left them with the map and the coordinates to finish their plans for the evening. When they left the office as the sun sank behind the buildings around them, it was, unfortunately, with far less extra insight than they’d hoped for. None of them were happy going in with so many unknowns, but the prospect of leaving some blameless bystander to suffer while they searched for information that might not even be out there was even less appealing. 

They’d transferred all the kit from the other night from Trevor’s car into Sypha’s and set out. 

The trip took a while and they could have done with setting out earlier, but it was too late in the year to worry about trying to catch anybody in daylight. Still, between the tense quiet on the drive and the slightly too warm heating in the car, they were dozy by the time they arrived at the little industrial estate and found themselves outside the only unit with lights still on inside. 

Trevor let the chill and the drizzle wake him up. 

“I’ll take the roof then. See you in there.” He jogged round the side of the block of buildings to a fire escape and made his way up to the roof, walking along the front edge of it so he could see Sypha and Adrian standing in the car park. They were talking, Sypha’s face turned upward to look Adrian in the eye, Adrian’s head slightly bowed so she could speak quietly. He took her hand for a moment, gave it a squeeze, and Trevor felt suffused from the inside out with affection for them. 

He placed his feet carefully as he made his way across the unit, listening carefully for clues as to what was going on underneath him. There was a skylight with no light showing through it, which struck him as odd when there was definitely light from the windows on the ground floor, and the suggestion of voices under it. There was space under the panels around it where he would be able to wedge something, so he pulled the crowbar from his rucksack and set to levering one up.

There wasn’t going to be any keeping this quiet so Trevor opted for fast and hoped the noise would attract only enough attention for the holy water to take out more than one vampire when he dumped the bottle on them - and not enough for them to come through the roof before he was ready. Under the metal panel, the street lights on the road behind him shed just enough light to reveal the top of a suspended ceiling. 

“Didn’t just board up the skylight to keep the sun out, huh? Well, makes my job easier.” He muttered to himself as he hauled the three litre pop bottle full of holy water out of his bag. He tipped it slowly so the ceiling tiles gradually saturated, darkening as they soaked up the water and began to let it through. 

Muffled voices came from below. Something poked a ceiling tile so Trevor upended the bottle and was rewarded with a flash of eerie fire and a guttural scream as it hit someone. He counted to three, then dropped through the sodden tiles, into a fetid puddle of dissolved vampire.

“Didn’t think to mop this up then, lads? Look at that, all over my damn boots.” Trevor placed his foot back down carefully, pushed his weight onto the balls of his feet, one set back from the other. Two vampires in front of him, probably one behind too, though he couldn’t see them. The vampires leapt at him and he dropped to his knees and rolled out of their path. 

There were shouts downstairs, so Sypha and Adrian must have arrived. As he came to his feet, Trevor thrust out a fist with a stake in it and a vampire fell and began to shrivel. He turned - two left and then he could get downstairs. 

They were hissing and baring their teeth at him, holding back and waiting for him to make the first move.

“Come on, are you scared? You can take  _ one _ human, can’t you?” Trevor goaded. The vampires exchanged a worried look and didn’t attack. Trevor rolled his eyes. 

“Honestly, can’t get the bloodthirsty monsters these days.” He kicked a leg out from under one of them, pitching him forward into the soggy remains of his comrade, and punched the other in the face. The one he’d punched howled and swung a fist back at him. Trevor ducked under it and came up with his sword in his hand to strike the vampire’s head off. 

As the body dropped, the other got up, covered in the same revolting sludge Trevor had already rolled in and evidently furious. She growled and threw herself at Trevor in a rugby tackle that bore him to the ground. He drove a knee up into her and the momentum carried them both right over so Trevor ended up on top, driving his blade down through her neck.

He dashed down the stairs from the mezzanine floor he’d landed on. On the ground floor, Sypha was sending a whirling blade of ice right through the body of a vampire near a flight of stairs on the other side of the unit. Assorted parts of probably three others were scattered across the floor, and there was blood dripping from Adrian’s sword.

Trevor crossed the floor and joined them just as four more vampires appeared from the other mezzanine and the office at the back of the unit. 

“Christ, what have you rolled in this time Trevor?” Adrian frowned at him even as he raised his sword to deal with the new wave of opposition.

“I don’t like me being covered in melted vampire any more than you do.” Trevor sheathed his sword and unhooked the consecrated whip from his belt. Adrian let go of the hilt in his hand and his blade whizzed across the room to behead the nearest vampire. 

“Honestly. It’s worse than having a dog.” He tutted, as Trevor lashed the whip out, tangling a body in its coils and pulling it in to bury a stake in its chest. A blast of heat and light came from behind them as Sypha blasted another in the face with a gout of magical flame. 

“Would you two stop bickering?”

Adrian flashed past Trevor, snatched a stake from the bandolier on his chest and despatched the last vampire in the room at lightning speed.

“Two places left to check for the sacrifice. I’ll take upstairs.” Adrian whispered, beginning to rise into the air.

“Hang on, I’ll take the stairs and stop anyone getting away from you.” Trevor coiled the whip and stowed it away again. Sypha turned toward the open door of the office and summoned a ball of fire into one hand.

“See you boys back here in five then.”

Adrian’s levitation trick got him up there faster, of course, though not fast enough to stop someone running from him. Trevor drew his sword to deal with them on the stairs, but the vampire saw him from the top steps and just jumped the bannister. Adrian swore and followed, landing elegant and deadly between the vampire and the door Sypha had just gone through. Trevor checked around upstairs to the sound of Adrian’s sword slashing through flesh and found nothing of interest.

As he turned to go back downstairs, the front door slammed open, and another gang of vampires rushed in. 

“Someone must have called for back-up!” He shouted over the bannister. Sypha threw ice shields up around a woman she’d just brought out of the office, and she and Adrian formed up around her to push back through the crowd. 

A smaller gang peeled off up the stairs toward where Trevor stood. He took one weapon in each hand and let muscle memory take over, slashing, dodging, rolling and punching among the veritable army of vampires. Plenty dropped, but there seemed to be no end to them. 

A crash and a spout of flames from downstairs suggested Sypha had got to the door, and that was when something hit Trevor in the head. 

His vision swam. Two sets of arms seized him, and dragged him towards the window at the front of the building. Things went dark. There was the sound of glass smashing, the sensation of cool air. He could see Sypha looking up as she guided the teacher back to the car, and his whip slipping from his hand and tumbling away. The dark enclosed on him again and distantly, someone was shouting his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trevor Belmont:  
> The Entire Trephacard Fandom, Apparently: That's a damsel in distress if ever I saw one.
> 
> Ty again all for your appreciation and interaction. Since we're about halfway through my outline, I'm pretty curious about where you all think this is going, share your theories ;) ;) ;)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As you might expect, being the prisoner of a gang of vampires isn't what you'd call fun.

Trevor was dimly aware of hands tugging at his clothing, and fabric dragging over his skin. He tried to swat the hands away, but he couldn’t seem to move. There were voices, things clanging, and then quiet again. 

When he actually woke up, he was on a mattress with a wall of bars between him and a dozing vampire in a polo shirt. Not ideal; he thought; but don’t panic, try to take stock. The room was dark, had a bare pine floor and one window, which was painted over to stop any light coming in.

Trevor was certain the t-shirt and joggers he was wearing weren’t what he was in before… what had happened? They’d gone to rescue the teacher, he’d been separated from the others and. Ah yes, then he was very much kidnapped. No weapons against what might be a houseful of vampires wasn’t going to end well, even if he could have got out of this literal fucking cage, so Trevor was going to have to sit and wait for Adrian and Sypha to rescue him. Shit.

There were voices outside the door. 

“Funny that the ideal blood donor should be one of Alucard's pets.” One voice said. It was soft, feminine, had a slight accent that might have been French or something. 

“I don’t know, having those planetary placements might well be what put them on a collision course.” The second voice was far deeper, with every syllable clipped like an old film. The door opened.

“I’m glad it was this one at least, confining the magician would have been a hell of a lot more trouble.” The first voice spoke again as they came into the room. It belonged to a tall woman with glossy brown hair that was pulled back into a braid to show her pointed ears. 

She was followed by a man of a similar height, blond and broad. They were both extremely crisply dressed in charcoal grey shirts and trousers. The polo-shirted guard vampire started and stood up when they came in. 

“Ah, he’s woken up. Lawrence, you’ll have to help restrain him while Rebecca takes the blood.” The woman said. She and the blond man moved to one side to allow a vampire in a nurses’ tunic to follow them through the door. 

The guard walked over to the bars and dissolved into mist, passing through them. He coalesced behind Trevor, hauled him off the mattress with an arm pressed threateningly across his throat, and pressed him against the bars so his arms hung outside. The blond man, Lawrence, Trevor supposed, grabbed his arms and slapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, then pulled so his arms were held out for the nurse, who was preparing a needle, blood pressure cuff, and blood sample bags.

“What the fuck are you-” Trevor tried to struggle, but the vampires’ grip on him was rigid. The pressure cuff went on over his bicep and was inflated. 

“There’ll be a small scratch.” The nurse - Rebecca? - said, as if she was reading from a script. She inserted the needle in the crook of Trevor’s elbow and he watched in horror as his blood flowed through the tube at the end of it and into the bags she’d prepared. 

She put a plaster on his arm when she’d finished with him and packed up her kit silently. His hands were uncuffed and released, and the guard misted back through the bars.

“Make sure he has plenty of water.” The woman said, then turned on her heel and left, tailed by Lawrence and Rebecca. The guard grabbed a bottle of water and shoved it through the bars. He took his seat again and closed his eyes. 

“What was that in aid of?” Trevor wasn’t expecting much of an answer but he was angry. The guard looked at him with disinterest.

“Need the blood for the spell.” 

“Wasn’t that what the teacher was for?”

“Iunno, they just said to guard you and they’d be coming to take blood for the spell.” The guard shrugged. They really had learned from the mistake of saying too much in front of Maxie and Marius then. Trevor sulked on his mattress, took a drink of water, and dozed off for a while. 

He roused when the guard was relieved, swapped for another vampire in matching clothes. They didn’t say anything to each other, not even a comment about the time, just acknowledged one another’s presence. Trevor rolled over so his back was to his guard.

Adrian was on top of him, hemming him in with his long limbs and a cascade of golden hair. Trevor arched his back and answered Adrian’s thrusts. Sypha’s voice was nearby, expressing her appreciation, whispering encouragement into Trevor’s ear. Her hands were sliding down his chest and she was pressed against his back, kissing his shoulders. 

His perspective tilted and blurred, and they were in the living room at his old flat, and Sypha’s face was so tight and disappointed, and Adrian’s back was turned and his fists were clenched. 

“Please, please, I’m sorry, I love you, please…” Trevor was begging, but they just walked away, and it felt like his chest had been torn open.

He became aware of the mattress springs prodding his hip, a slight smell of mildew, footsteps coming up stairs, then moving in the corridor outside. Someone brought food and he ate without registering what it was. 

That last image of the dream, Adrian and Sypha leaving him, hung around Trevor and made him ache. He curled up, wanting to cry but not wanting to give his captors that satisfaction. 

The hollow, raw feeling in his chest was still there when the smartly dressed vampires and the nurse came in again. 

“I’m not in the mood thanks.” Trevor said.

“Oh dear Lawrence, I suppose we’d better come back later.” The woman said. Lawrence laughed. She nodded to the guard, and the process of pinning Trevor to the bars of the cell and taking his blood was repeated. The woman dismissed the others when they were finished.

“Send up the next shift when it’s time to feed him.” 

“Really, Clemency?” Lawrence asked.

“It’s been so quiet, let me amuse myself, Lawrence.”

She closed the door behind them and folded herself down to the floor.

“Clemency huh? That’s ironic.” Trevor said, indicating the bars between them. 

“Yes, well, I doubt my parents foresaw this when they named me. They probably weren’t expecting me to survive infancy, let alone everything I’ve got up to in my long undeath.” She was inspecting her pointed fingernails rather than looking at Trevor directly.

“Is there something in particular you wanted from me?” He might’ve been here less than a day and Trevor was already bone-weary with it.

“I’ve been wondering what he gets out of having you around.” She gave him a piercing look. 

“I expect it’s my good looks and charming personality.” Trevor deadpanned. She laughed.

“Mm, I suppose he might want to keep you on hand for the sake of prophecies. Although...” She leaned in, and slowly smiled so her canines glinted in the light. “Has he ever told you how  _ edible _ you smell?” Trevor didn’t quite suppress the urge to recoil. 

“No need to be shy about it, Belmont, I can see the marks on you.” She stretched and licked her lips. “I think I’ll see if I can have what’s left of you once the resurrection is complete.”

“No concerns about going after someone dear to your master’s house?” He hoped he might sound intimidating, but there was a shake in his voice that robbed him of that. His stomach turned at the thought of that unasked-for intimacy.

“There are precious few of us old enough to have that kind of loyalty, however ‘dear’ you are.” She sneered. “ _ Your _ master might do well to remember that the world changes while he sleeps.” 

“You don’t have that kind of loyalty but you’re still trying to bring Dracula back?” 

“Loyalty and agreeing with someone’s goals aren’t synonymous.” She rolled her eyes. “Hm, I think I hear your meal on its way. Well, nice to torment you.” She got up and opened the door just in time for a guard with a plate to enter. 

Trevor ate. The silence was becoming oppressive, but the last guard hadn’t been up for telling him much so why would this one be.

“Could’ve given me a book or something if I was just going to have to sit here.” Trevor looked around his cell. The guard didn’t respond. 

If he moved the mattress, Trevor would be able to make just about enough space to do some sit-ups or something, so he wasn’t just wasting away with inaction as well as boredom. 

The guard frowned when he started moving things around but didn’t make any comment. 

It felt good to move, but not enough to overcome that still-raw feeling in his chest and the lingering fear that no one was coming for him.

Time trickled by and the fanged phlebotomists returned again. Clemency snapped at the guard, and the scowl on her face didn’t lift at all as the blood drawing was completed. 

“Something has you riled.” Trevor said, with his face still pressed against the bars. Her lip curled at him. Lawrence gave her a pleading sort of look. 

“We saw enough of the mess they’d made when we picked this one up, we shouldn’t be surprised.” She snarled. 

“The mess?” Trevor didn’t really expect an answer but Clemency straightened up and raised her chin haughtily. 

“Your lovers cut something of a swathe the night we took you in. It’s not material to our plans, of course, but I counted personal friends among their victims.”

“Some might say it’d serve you right for being friends with kidnappers and bastards.” The guard had released Trevor at last but Lawrence was taking his time to undo the handcuffs. 

“It doesn't matter how many of us they kill.” He said, holding on to Trevor's arms and stopping him from pulling back. “There will always be more.”

“Yeah, like there always has been.” Trevor stayed perfectly still. “No one ever expected to drive you to extinction, just stop you treating humans like livestock.” 

“Says the last son of the Belmont clan, from his cage.” Lawrence released Trevor’s hands and all but threw them back at him. 

“That’s my point. You’d be doing this sort of shit to everybody given the chance, so we set out to make it harder for you.”

“The survivors say they're incredible to watch together, your lovers.” Clemency’s voice was quiet but it carried as sharp and clear as a school bell. “Their cooperation is so fluid, and their power? They’re like demigods. And what does Trevor Belmont have?” She came in close to the bars where Trevor still stood. “A pedigree.”

Trevor shrugged. She scoffed.

“How well can you even look after yourself without them?” Her hand shot through the bars to seize Trevor’s face. She ran her thumb across the scar on his cheek. “Did you pick this up before you had someone stronger to intervene for you?”

“Wh- I fell off a mountain bike when I was fifteen!” 

She sneered and turned away, jerking her head to indicate the others should leave with her, and they left Trevor alone with a single guard again.

He flexed his arms in hope of relieving the discomfort where he’d been held still. A wave of pressure passed through him and his vision went spotty. He sat down heavily.

“Shit.” He took a deep breath, then another, waiting for the sensation to pass. The guard didn’t move. The feeling wasn’t going away so Trevor lay down and closed his eyes, trying to breathe through it.

There was a scream from downstairs, and then shouting. Trevor sat up, waited a moment for his head to clear, and tried to work out what was going on. His guard was faced up to the door as if expecting someone to burst through any moment, and someone - Clemency perhaps - was yelling elsewhere in the building.

“Secure the blood first!” 

Some glass broke, someone else screamed, then there was a growl, and footsteps on the stairs, then… claws?

More shouting, and a growl, a thud as something heavy hit the floor, then the doorknob turned and the guard launched forward at whoever was on the other side, only to stagger back with a long, slender blade buried in his body. 

Adrian followed his sword, pulled it from the guard’s chest and struck off his head with a single blow. He turned and caught sight of Trevor. In a flash he was at the cell door, hauling the padlock open with a snarl so he could get inside. 

Trevor didn’t have time to move before Adrian's hand curled around the nape of his neck and pressed him close. 

“Oh god, oh my god you’re safe!” he gasped.

"Missed me then?" 

"Trevor I - yes, yes I missed you.” He leaned back to inspect Trevor’s face. “You look awful.”

“Oh thanks, you try looking your best after being bled for - how long have I been here?” Trevor felt dizzy again and groped beside the mattress for the bottle of water. Adrian grabbed it for him. 

“Three days now, they took you quite a long way away. Let’s not make it any longer. Can you walk?”

“Yeah, probably.” Trevor wobbled a bit as he got up, his blood pressure not quite keeping up with him. Adrian looped an arm around his waist to help hold him up. 

“They were bleeding you?” Adrian asked as they left the room.

“Yeah, sample bags, but loads of them, said they needed it for the ritual, but I thought that was what the teacher was for.”

Adrian sucked a breath through his teeth. 

“We’ll talk more about it later. Excuse me.” They got to the top of the stairs, and rather than try to negotiate helping Trevor down the narrow passage, Adrian turned and slung him over his shoulder.

“Hey.” Trevor protested, but didn’t struggle. He hadn’t realised how tired he was. Adrian put him down when they got to the small hallway on the ground floor, and steered them towards the back door, past huge scorch-marks on the wallpaper. 

“Sypha wasn’t pulling her punches then.” Trevor’s suspicions were proven right as they stepped into the back garden. Sypha was streaked with soot and blood, and they arrived just in time to see her launch a spear of ice through a guard who was trying to make a break for it. 

“Sypha!” Adrian shouted. Her face uncrumpled from a furious grimace as she turned and saw them.

“Oh my gods, Trevor what happened?” She rushed over and grabbed Trevor in a tight embrace.

“Can we talk about it when we’re on the way home?” Adrian’s voice was tighter, more worried than Trevor thought he’d ever heard him. Sypha nodded her agreement and let Adrian turn Trevor and walk him back through the house. 

“I want to burn them all to the ground.” Sypha said as they stepped out of the front door. Adrian paused to look up at the face of the building. 

“I don’t think there’s anyone left inside.” Adrian’s eyes were haunted and weary as he turned to her. She stared him down with her fists clenched at her sides.

“Then I’ll burn it down so they can’t come back.” 

Adrian nodded stiffly and turned with Trevor to leave as she raised her hands and sent a half dozen tiny balls of fire floating through the front door. 

Halfway down the path, dark spots started appearing across Trevor’s vision and he felt the world begin to shift sideways. He was aware of Adrian catching him and a rush of air, pressure against his ribs, and then his head cleared enough to understand that he’d been slung over Adrian’s shoulder like a sack of flour. 

“Why do I keep ending up in this position?” 

“This is for a better reason than at Halloween.” Sypha patted Trevor’s head. He groaned. 

“Adrian, tell her not to take the piss.”

“Save taking the piss out of him for when we’ve got him home, Sypha.” Adrian’s voice made Trevor’s chest buzz pleasantly where they were pressed together. 

“Uuuugh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time we will comfort Trevor after his ordeal. Poor lamb. 
> 
> I think this is three weeks now of pretty much weekly updates so good job me I guess. No guarantees of keeping that up mind you.  
> As always your love sustains me and keeps me writing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tenderness(tm)

It was too dark outside the car to see where they were when Trevor was properly awake again. 

“Are we close to home?” 

“Hi” Adrian turned round to look Trevor over with a soft smile on his face. “About an hour and a half away. How are you feeling?”

“Tired. Bit headachey.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to feel your best for a good few days.”

“Good to have you awake.” Sypha said, with her eyes on the road. “Um, you’ll need to call your sister.”

“Oh shit; Sypha please tell me you didn’t call Judith, she’ll be furious!”

“she’d have been even more furious if she found out later.” 

“The shouting went on for  _ so long _ when she found out you hadn’t told her about us for a year.” Adrian flopped his head dramatically against the passenger seat as he handed Trevor his phone. The orange light of the few streetlights in the little village they were driving through shone in his eyes and made him look even more peculiar and ethereal than usual. Trevor’s head wasn’t clear enough to avoid letting that image capture him for a long moment, mouth hanging open while he thought about just snogging that ridiculous smirk off his ridiculous face.

“I’ll stop distracting you.” Adrian said. He winked as he turned back to face the road. Trevor groaned into his hands, then took a deep breath and found the entry for his sister in his phone’s contact list.

“It’s gone midnight, won’t she be more annoyed if I call now?”

“I promised her you’d call as soon as you were safe.” Sypha said. 

“Christ, alright, alright.” He pressed the icon and put the phone to his ear. It rang about four times and then;

“Hello, Sypha?”

“Uh, hi Jude, it’s me.”

“Trevor oh my god, you are actually alive then. I mean holy shit, the first news we get from you in over a year and it's your girlfriend calling to say you've been kidnapped by vampires are you fucking kidding me?!”

“Yeah, sorry about not calling. Are you happy to hear I’m alive at least?”

“Of course I am, I’m… I’m upset that this is what it took for us to hear from you.” She sighed down the phone. “Kris and the girls would like to see you, when you’ve dealt with this.”

“We’ll arrange something. I’ll make sure Sypha and Adrian hold me to it too.”

Well, I’ve got to go to bed. I'm glad you survived. I'd hate to find out how hard dad would haunt me if I was the only one left to do the work.”

“Love you Jude, you’re the fucking worst.”

“Love you too, dickhead.”

Trevor swiped away the days of notifications on the phone’s screen.

“I am going to hold this against you indefinitely.” He said, reaching out to squeeze Sypha’s shoulder.

“You’ve never managed to stay angry at me for more than an hour, you like me too much.” She rubbed his hand and winked at him in the rear-view mirror. 

“Nope, I’m determined this time. No forgiveness for dobbing me in.” Trevor crossed his arms and slumped back in the seat. Adrian reached back and patted his knee. 

“You’ll feel better when you’ve slept in a bed for a bit.”

“Great, patronised by everyone who loves me in the same hour.” 

Adrian turned in his seat and gave Trevor a wounded look. 

“Ah-I’m sorry.” He said, and turned back. Trevor knew he’d bitten back at what would normally be perfectly acceptable banter, and that Adrian would know that a man who was tired and short of blood might be irritable - and that he’d therefore be forgiven for snapping, and the apology was perfectly sincere, but that didn’t stop the way his stomach twisted. He curled in on himself and tried to breathe through the horrible gnawing feeling in his chest. 

Adrian hovered behind Trevor all the way up from the car to the flat, brushing off Trevor’s grumbling about being perfectly well enough to climb some stairs. He even insisted on holding the doors open for Trevor on the way. 

“Right, I’ll run you a bath.” Adrian said, once the flat door was locked behind them. 

“Look, I know I haven’t washed in a bit, but can’t I sleep first? Sypha, tell him I need to sleep.”

“Sorry Trevor, you probably can’t tell anymore, but you smell like a million armpits and you’re not allowed in the bed before you’re clean.” Sypha patted Trevor’s shoulder consolingly.

“You also smell of several other vampires and it is setting my teeth on edge.” Adrian added. 

“Can I shower then? It’s faster.”

“I don’t trust that you can stand up for long enough, Trevor. Please just get in the bath. Let me take care of you.” 

Trevor inhaled to argue, but the look on Adrian’s face robbed the fight from him. He sighed and gestured his surrender. Adrian turned to the bathroom and started running the bath. 

“I’ll make some tea.” Sypha offered. Trevor dawdled over to the bathroom and stood in the door. Adrian was leaning over the bath, shaking a container of bath salts into the running water. 

“Did you say you can smell them on me?” Trevor asked him. Adrian straightened up and took a deep breath. 

“Yes. It is upsetting.” He’d gone all stiff and formal, like he had been when they first dug him up. His fist and jaw were clenched so tight that he was shaking. It seemed to Trevor that it might be a good idea to get back to smelling like himself before pressing for more details about  _ that _ .

“I’d better undress then. We should dispose of the clothes.”

“I’ll put a wash on and they can go in the charity shop bag in the morning.” Sypha said, delivering the tea. “This is the stronger sleep blend, so don’t hang about once you’ve drunk it.” She put the mugs down and held her hand out for the clothes. 

“Into the water with you then.” Adrian said. Trevor stripped and stepped into the bath. Adrian’s eyes were fixed on him as he eased himself into the water. He started when Sypha came back in and dropped the lid down on the toilet. 

“Mind if I sit in?” 

“No, not at all. Hm…” He looked pensive for a moment, then pulled a length of velvet ribbon from his pocket and swept his hair off his shoulders and into a low ponytail. “Right.” He grabbed the shower head off the wall and turned it on to soak Trevor’s head. 

When he was satisfied he turned off the water and knelt down with a bottle of shampoo. Trevor leaned in to the feeling of Adrian’s long fingers massaging his scalp.

His head was rinsed and Adrian squeezed a dollop of conditioner into his palm and began to run it through Trevor’s hair, loosening the tangles.

“Adrian, are you using your stuff rather than mine?”

“Do you mind?”

“Is there a reason for it?”

Adrian sighed and leaned his elbows on the side of the bath, head bowed and teeth gritted. 

“I would like you to smell like you’re mine again, and this is the fastest way I can think of to get there.”

“To - smell like he’s yours?” Sypha raised an eyebrow. 

“I can -” He turned from Sypha to Trevor in turn. “They’ve been touching him, and I can smell it. You both know vampires are territorial, and I do - share that when it comes to my people…”

“You’ve never mentioned anything about it before.” Sypha was frowning. “It’s irritating?”

“It is, but also… it makes me want to - assert my claim on him. If you catch my meaning. It’s different with vampires than it is with other humans, or I would have mentioned it.”

“I mean, I’m up for being, you know,  _ claimed _ , if that’ll help you calm down.” Trevor leaned his arm on the side of the bath and waggled his eyebrows, trying to get a rise out of him.

“You’ve had a very hard few days, I am not going to fuck you until you’ve had some sleep.” Adrian rebuffed him with an arched eyebrow.

“Scrub away then.” Trevor spread his arms and let Adrian lather him thoroughly with a bar of soap.. “It’s good to have your hands on me again.” The hoarseness of his own voice surprised him as much as the realisation, as he spoke the words, that more than anything else he had missed being touched by people who cared for him. Adrian paused.

“What did they do, Trevor?”

“Adrian…” 

“No, it’s alright Sypha.” Trevor reassured her. “They - I mean they manhandled me a bit, in the process of drawing the blood, but the one of them, Clemency. She seemed to be sort of in charge of what was going on with me and the blood at least and she was.... Showing interest in me. Said I smelled, ugh,  _ edible _ and threatened to have what was left of me once they’d done the ritual stuff.” He felt queasy thinking about it. Adrian and Sypha looked queasy hearing about it. 

“And they didn’t even deign to tell you what they were taking your blood for…” Sypha breathed.

“Yeah, only ever said ‘the resurrection’ or whatever, and that I had the right ‘planetary placements’?” 

Sypha tapped her fingers contemplatively.

“You might be some sort of back up for the teacher?” 

“Seems weird it wouldn’t show up in the locator spell though. I don’t know, I sort of hope they start splashing my blood around and it turns out they fucked up, ‘wasn’t Trevor Belmont we needed, it was Bevor Trelmont’!” He waved his hands around like a pantomime character.

Adrian leaned to the side for the shower head with shaking hands and started rinsing the suds and conditioner off.

“Hey, did the teacher know anything?” Trevor continued. 

“She seems to have had a similar experience with having blood taken, but didn’t have anything else to add. She was… distressed.” Sypha pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. 

“Referred her to the right places?” Trevor asked, softly. 

“Yeah, no guarantees she’ll go, but it’s what there is.” She sighed. Without official acknowledgement of the many things going bump in the night there wasn’t much in the way of help available if someone was traumatised by a vampire or demon or night creature, so people had made do with euphemistically named support groups and word-of-mouth referrals. 

Trevor was wrapped in the biggest, fluffiest towel in the flat when he got out of the bath. Adrian paused for a moment with his hand on Trevor’s shoulder, before Sypha shooed them both out of the bathroom so she could take her shower. 

“Come on boys, I’m sick of being covered in vampire blood, thank you.”

Adrian loitered, trying to suppress his yawns, while Trevor dried his hair and brushed his teeth.

“Oh god, I’d forgotten what being clean felt like. I never want to be parted from my toothbrush again.”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to stop them taking you.” Adrian said. 

“Even you can’t be everywhere at once. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Trevor came and sat beside him on the side of the bed. 

“It’s just - I can’t help but think I was right to try and keep you apart from it, I can’t keep you both safe all the time and it’s…”

“You dickhead, of course you can’t keep us safe, we’re fighting vampires - Dracula maybe. We both knew what we signed up for, and if you tell Sypha she has to stay behind, not only will she come along anyway, she’ll set your hair on fire for the insult.” 

Adrian sighed and leaned against him. 

“You’re right.”

“I love it when you say that.” Trevor grinned, then was overtaken by a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m gonna tuck myself in.”

“Good plan.” Adrian ruffled his hair. 

Sypha arrived, swathed in her dressing gown and trailed by a cloud of fragrant steam. 

“Your turn then Adrian.” She smiled at them both. As Adrian left the room she settled down on the floor with the hairdryer. 

“He’s being pretty self-pitying about me being captured.” Trevor pulled the duvet up over himself and rolled on to his side to look at her.

“He hasn’t handled it with his usual grace.” Sypha said. “We didn’t sleep much. Drank way too much coffee.”

“How did you handle it?”

“I saw them take you and I couldn’t do anything about it for fear they’d grab the teacher again... I was certain they took you for exactly that reason and you’d be dropped somewhere nearby, and then you weren’t…” She flopped her hands to the ground and clicked the hairdryer off to take a deep breath. “I haven’t handled it, I just let myself be numb. I was so  _ angry _ at them.” 

“Because you’re still scared you can’t stop it happening?” Trevor reached out his fingers along the bedding towards her. 

“I hate it when you’re insightful. Especially when you’re half asleep.” She rolled her eyes at him. 

“C’mere.” He beckoned and she shed her dressing gown on the floor and got under the covers beside him. He wrapped his arms round her. “I’m safe, right? Only a couple of weeks til the big night and then it’s all over one way or another.” 

She laughed and gave his shoulder a shove.

“One way or another? Well, there’s the pessimistic idiot I fell in love with.”

“Ah, sorry, I meant…”

Don’t worry about it Trevor, I know what you mean.” She pressed a little kiss to his forehead, and got back out of bed to finish drying her hair. 

Adrian came back from the shower apparently all ready for bed with his hair braided out of the way and a pair of pajama bottoms on. 

“Shift over Trevor, you’re going in the middle tonight.”

“What, no, I always get too hot in the middle!” Trevor protested. 

“I felt how cold your hands were when you were sat in a tub of hot water, you’ll be fine for tonight.” He heaved Trevor over to the middle of the bed with ease, if not elegance, and tucked himself in on what was normally Trevor’s side of the bed, pulling him in so Trevor’s back was pressed against his chest. 

Adrian nuzzled the back of Trevor’s neck and purred. Trevor would have made some crack about him being the world’s weirdest pet cat, but he was so cocooned in his arms and the smell of his soap that he surrendered to it without a word. 

When Sypha got into bed, her eyes were bright in the light of the bedside lamp, a little smile on her lips. She stroked the stubble on Trevor’s cheek - longer than he usually kept it, but a shave could wait til the morning.

“It’s good to have you home, Trevor. We missed you.”

“We did.” Adrian squeezed Trevor a little tighter as he spoke. 

“Please don’t go, please!” Trevor awoke with that ache in his chest and the vision of Sypha and Adrian turning away from him again. This time though, he opened his eyes to Sypha’s face right in front of him, huffling slightly in her sleep; and the long, pale hand pressed to his chest could only be Adrian’s. That hand stroked at him now, and Adrian mumbled behind him;

“Y’alright?”

“Yeah, had a bad dream, but s’ok.” He reached back and patted Adrian’s hip, and let himself drift back off. 

Sypha woke them in the morning, getting back into bed from a trip to the loo. 

“How have your toes got so chilly already?” Trevor grumbled. 

“You missed my cold toes, I bet.”

Trevor considered this. 

“There are other bits of you I missed more.” He said, and reached out to pull her in close so he could bury his face in her chest. 

“Oh come on, Adrian’s tits are better than mine, everyone knows it.” 

“Sypha!” Adrian propped himself up so he could see her over Trevor’s shoulder. “I will not sit idly by while you slander yourself in this way, your breasts are wonderful.”

She giggled. 

“I missed that too, just…” Trevor was cut off by Sypha cupping his chin in her hands and pulling him into a slow, sensuous kiss. He was breathless when she pulled back, but only took a moment to draw her close and kiss her again, then twist in Adrian’s arms to kiss him. Adrian’s hand curled uselessly on Trevor’s chest as if he was unsure how much force he’d apply if he actually tried to hold on. 

When Trevor let him go, Sypha leaned over to take her own taste of Adrian’s lips. Trevor took a moment to savour the warmth of being pressed between them. 

Adrian wriggled back down behind him, and ran his hands down Trevor’s body. He traced the scars and curled his fingers around the crest of Trevor’s hips, before skating a palm across his hardening cock. 

Sypha swung her leg over the top of Trevor’s hip to pull him in close. She pressed herself against him and ran her hand down between them to join Adrian’s on Trevor’s cock. 

Trevor responded to their caresses with a quiet groan and a luxurious stretch. 

“Hmm, can we take a moment to rearrange?” Adrian said, kissing Trevor’s neck. 

“Where do you want me?”

Adrian sat up and shuffled himself and the pillows around so his back was propped up against the headboard. He gestured for Trevor to sit in front of him, between his thighs, so Adrian could run his hands across all of Trevor’s chest, and stomach, and thighs. 

He did so, and eased Trevor’s thighs apart, making an appreciative noise at the way his cock twitched. 

Sypha looked the both of them over and licked her lips. Trevor felt Adrian smile. She pressed herself against Trevor again, kissing his mouth, and jaw, and shoulders, working her way down with little bites across his chest to his hips.

Her hands followed, fingernails scraping over his skin. 

Adrian looped his arms through Trevor’s to hold him still, as Sypha wriggled down to lie on her stomach. She ran her tongue up across Trevor’s balls and grinned when it made him gasp. 

Adrian was holding him so tightly that Trevor couldn’t buck into Sypha’s mouth when her tongue had made its way up his shaft and her lips wrapped round the head of his cock. He still tried of course, if only so Adrian would kiss his neck again and tell him to be patient. 

“We’re not going to hurry, not today.”

“Please don’t make me beg.” Trevor groaned. Sypha pulled her head back to give Adrian a look. 

“That sounds like begging to me.”

“Mm, it does, and I like it when you beg, Trevor.” 

Sypha’s hand was now making firm strokes up and down Trevor’s cock and she was watching his face intently. Her breath was warm and tickly on him, she was so close. 

Trevor bit his lip and looked at her pleadingly, and she just gave him a wicked grin. 

“Please, Sypha?”

She obliged, sliding her mouth down the full length of him. 

“Ohh god, thank you.” Trevor groaned. Her hand was stroking over him too, and Adrian was gently tugging at his hair. He surrendered to them completely, letting himself cease thinking and only feel. 

Sypha released him from her mouth with a last long, slow drag of her tongue under the head of his cock. She moved back up and swallowed his whine with a kiss, before climbing into his lap. Adrian leaned over Trevor’s shoulder, and Sypha kissed him, then Trevor again.

She wriggled happily when Trevor’s cock twitched against her. He whined again, then groaned as she reached under herself to slip his cock inside her. 

Adrian released Trevor’s arms and he surged forward to wrap them around Sypha, to get some leverage to thrust into her and make her moan. She claimed a sloppy kiss from him, then turned his head so Adrian could do the same, licking into Trevor’s mouth with a hand buried in his hair as Sypha rolled her hips against him. 

“Oh look at you, Trevor.” Adrian whispered. “She’s got you all helpless, and you look so beautiful when you’re desperate for us.” 

Trevor let his head flop back on to Adrian’s shoulder and his eyelids flutter closed. Adrian’s hand stroked up one side of his throat as he pressed more kisses to the other. 

“So, so beautiful. Lean back a little for me, Sypha?” He reached between them to rub circles across Sypha’s clit. Trevor felt her squeezing around his cock in response and groaned again. Tension was building in the pit of his belly and the sound of Sypha’s ragged breaths was giving it an edge. He wasn’t going to be able to stop it overtaking him.

“Oh shit.” he swore quietly. Adrian kissed him again.

“Let go, I want to see it Trevor.”

“Yesss.” Sypha agreed. She braced her hands against Trevor’s shoulders and ground against him again. She was chasing her own pleasure, but that in itself was always an incredible show. 

Her fingernails dug into Trevor’s skin as she came. Trevor could only grasp at her thigh helplessly as her rhythm sped up, then stuttered, then evened out again.

She leaned in and rested her forehead against his as her hips continued to move. 

“Are you going to come for us, Trevor?” she gasped. He only whimpered in response. Adrian tugged again on his hair and sighed into his ear, and as Sypha clenched on his cock again, moaning through another orgasm, the tightening knot in Trevor’s belly unraveled and he came, gasping and moaning, held safe between his lovers.

Sypha climbed off Trevor’s lap and pulled him to one side to cuddle in, as Adrian wriggled his way out from behind him to sandwich Trevor cosily between them. 

“Ah, Adrian…” Trevor twisted to look at him. “You didn’t…”

“It’s fine, Trevor, I don’t need-” He trailed off. Trevor was giving him his best pleadingly horny face, and it seemed to be working. “I don’t want to risk hurting you if I get carried away.”

Trevor stroked Adrian’s face.

“You won’t, Adrian. The threat of Sypha murdering you for it is far too good a deterrent, isn’t it?” Trevor grinned. Sypha laughed behind him. 

“I think that’s what’s kept him from it so far.” She hooked her chin onto Trevor’s shoulder to grin at Adrian too. Trevor batted his eyelashes at him.

“I have an idea what we can do. You know, so you can ‘claim’ me?” 

“I am - cautiously - interested…”Adrian said.

“Okay, just stand up, then uuh,” Trevor shoved Adrian to get him out of the bed, then grabbed him by the hips to position him next to the mattress while shifting himself to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked up the wiry length of Adrian’s torso and into his golden eyes. 

“How about this?”

Adrian nodded. Trevor kissed the trail of fine hair across his stomach and stroked his hand across Adrian’s thigh to take hold of his cock. He didn’t bother to tease before wrapping his mouth over the head, prompting an appreciative noise from Adrian. As he worked his tongue across the underside of the shaft, he was aware of the mattress moving as Sypha got up, then as he bobbed his head to take more of Adrian’s cock, he saw her move behind Adrian out of the corner of his eye. 

There was a noise like a tube being snapped open, and Trevor started to form a theory about what she might be doing. It was confirmed only moments later when Adrian’s breath caught in his throat and his hands tightened on Trevor’s shoulders. His cock twitched in Trevor’s mouth. 

Trevor braced his hands on Adrian’s hips and pushed forward until his cock hit the back of his throat over and again, swirling his tongue over the head when he pulled back and savouring the glorious noises Adrian was making.

Sypha was whispering indistinct encouragement to Adrian, and his hips had begun to move, trying to wring as much sensation out of what they were doing to him as possible. He squeaked out a little;

“Oh God…” and his stomach muscles visibly tensed. Trevor pulled his mouth away and took hold of Adrian’s cock in one hand instead. He moved his hand faster than he had been moving his mouth, and pulled Adrian in so he could press kisses and little bites to his belly. 

Adrian made a desperate whine and Trevor craned his neck so he could see the beautiful look of abandon on his face, note the pink skin on his shoulder where Sypha had bitten him too.

There was another not-quite stifled cry, and Adrian was twitching and shaking in Trevor’s hands, clutching at his shoulders and whimpering. He staggered a half-step back, and Sypha was stroking his ribs, trying to soothe him enough that he could stand. 

When he looked down at Trevor, Adrian’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes eerily bright. Trevor was sure he looked a picture himself, with saliva down his chin, semen splashed across his collarbones and a ridiculous, soppy expression on his face. 

Adrian dropped to one knee and pulled Trevor into a frantic kiss. He tugged Sypha down with him and kissed her too, then went back to Trevor while she giggled. 

“Oh god, I love you, I love you.” He told them both, bundling them all back into bed and into their more usual sleeping configuration - Sypha one side, Trevor the other, and Adrian creating a tangle of long limbs in the middle. Trevor spotted a glistening in his eyes.

“Oh my god Adrian, are you crying? Did I do that bad a job?” 

“No, I’m not crying,” Adrian rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. “I’m just very relieved that you’re home.” 

Sypha cuddled in behind him.

“I’d never have guessed that the son of Dracula would be such a soppy bastard.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels so good to reunite these three, how did Warren Ellis hold off doing it for a whole season.  
> Discussion of Adrian's tits in tribute to that person Ellis reblogged and then quoted in an interview obvsly. 
> 
> Big credit to mine spouse for helping turn this sex scene from something I was like "engh?" about, into something I'm pretty pleased with.
> 
> As always, love and comments motivate me to keep wrangling this beast of a fic. I don't know how much is left in it, but we are coming to a *climax* so do keep them kudos coming for ya girl here.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out to prevent Dracula's resurrection.

“I told you, Trevor, you are not going to be allowed to do anything strenuous for at least a week.” Adrian didn’t look up from the frying pans in front of him. 

“Oh come on I’m fine! Wasn’t I fine earlier?” Trevor tried looking to Sypha for support, but she just raised her eyebrows at him over the top of the book she was reading. Adrian waved his spatula in exasperation. 

“That’s not the same thing!”

“It was strenuous!”

“Nothing like as strenuous as fighting a cult dedicated to the resurrection of Dracula.” Adrian scooped food onto a plate and put it down on the table. “Now sit down and eat your breakfast. Sypha, how would you like your egg?”

“Over easy please.” She smiled at Adrian, and leaned over to pat Trevor’s arm when he sat down. 

Trevor tried to settle in for a really good sulk. He could accept that maybe he wasn’t at peak performance after his little ordeal but they didn’t have time to waste now the vampires had all the ingredients Sypha’s spell had found, plus a bit of spare Trevor for… whatever that was for. Still, it was hard to keep up a solid grump when he was being treated to such a lovely morning. Sex, a fry-up, Adrian cooking with no trousers on under his silk shirt, and Sypha beaming as her own breakfast arrived at the table. 

“If I can’t come fighting vampire cultists for a week that means we have to strike the day of - wouldn’t you rather interrupt them before that?”

“Of course I would.” Adrian took off his apron then brought his own plate to the table. “But I’m not going to put you at risk to do it.” He ruffled Trevor’s hair before he sat down. Sypha put her book down.

“Plus, we don’t know where they’re going to be in the meantime, but we know exactly where they’ll be that night, so we might as well hang about rather than drive ourselves crazy trying to find them.”

“I - feel better about it being a strategy rather than just coddling me.” Trevor said. Sypha smiled and leaned over to kiss his cheek. 

“We are also coddling you, don’t get carried away.” She grinned. 

Plans for the day of the resurrection weren’t far from their minds as it approached. Since the cult would be expecting them, there wasn’t going to be a chance to sneak in unnoticed, especially with the site being in the middle of sodding nowhere. The miles of fields and woods around the spot would let the vampires be conspicuous about posting guards and lookouts exactly the way being in a town wouldn’t, so they would have to fight their way there. Trevor insisted that was justification enough to exert himself in training and sparring. Adrian had pulled a face about it, but eventually relented when Trevor threatened to dunk a sock in his tea, much to Sypha’s amusement. 

They all headed up on the roof to do drills with and without their weapons and practice agility and observation by having Sypha throw chunks of snow at the boys. The physical effort was welcome, letting conscious thought drift away in burning muscles and the solidity of the others’ bodies. 

They descended into shrieking laughter when Adrian caught a snowball right in the face, having dropped his guard too early. He responded by putting Trevor - still helpless with laughter - into a headlock as if he had forgotten about being gentle with him. 

“So much for me being fragile.” Trevor said when he’d recovered enough breath to form words, and Adrian released him with a worried look. 

“Oh, shit-”

“Nope, no, I’m fine.” Trevor pushed Adrian back when he started to look too concerned, and gave him a reassuring grin. “Fine look, I can handle a bit of rough treatment. Actually it has been a while since you got rough with me-”

“Trevor.” Adrian warned, not-quite suppressing a smile.

When they came back down to the flat, Sypha had gone and got yoga mats out before Adrian had even put away the pads they’d been using for sparring. Trevor pulled a face at them.

“Ohh don’t look like that, it’ll do you good to do a little meditation.” Sypha said.

“I’m sure that’s the idea but when was the last time I successfully sat still for more than five minutes without a shiny screen to distract me?” Trevor grumbled.

“You just need to focus on your breathing.” Adrian took a mat and rolled it out. Trevor rolled his eyes and did the same, then went to kick off his shoes. 

“We’ll just sit for five minutes and then do a few sun salutations, just to relax a bit, you know?” Sypha settled herself down with her legs crossed.

Less than a minute into sitting on the floor trying to focus on his breathing, Trevor started to fidget. He cleared his throat and rolled his neck until it cracked. From the corner of his eye he saw Adrian purse his lips. 

“Sorry.” He whispered. 

“You’re making it worse.” Adrian muttered back. 

Sypha grabbed her socks and threw one at each of them, and any atmosphere of serenity they might have had was lost in the noises of disgust as they tried to get out of the way. She settled back with a raised eyebrow which Trevor took to mean he should do the same. 

He turned and saw Adrian kick the sock off his yoga mat and close his eyes again. 

He managed to sit still enough not to cause a second upset, and they got through the sequence of stretches without incident, though Trevor did skip a couple of poses in favour of admiring Sypha. 

Adrian suggested they train on the next couple of days, and even allowed it when Trevor asked him to spar properly. It felt like being signed off as well enough, and, in spite of the dire threats hanging over them, Trevor started to feel as happy as he had any time since Adrian had snuck off on the trip he brought Pieter home from. 

“Big day tomorrow.” Trevor said to Sypha while he was making dinner.

“Mm, I’m nervous. There’s been so much build up!”

“There’s no need to be nervous, is there? I thought it was all predestined.” Trevor gave the saucepan in front of him another stir and turned the heat down under it. 

“I was never really sure how much of this was predestined and how much we’ve figured out as we went along. It all felt like we were making free choices, right?” She leaned against the kitchen counter and looked up at him. 

“I mean….shit” Trevor’s timer went off and he had to take a moment to faff about with the pan of pasta. “Uh - yeah, I don’t know that I ever felt like my options were open, you know? Ever since we got out of that crypt I haven’t… It hasn’t even occurred to me to make any different choices than I did.”

“You never thought about sending Adrian on his way?”

“When two beautiful, deadly, hilarious people were dangling the chance to fulfill the family’s duty in front of me? It’s like the universe went; ‘how do we make absolutely certain this idiot gets stuck in?’ and it worked.” Trevor spread his hands wide and she laughed. 

“And then we started fucking you.”

“How could I have chosen any differently?” He reached out a hand to her and pulled her in close when she took it. She laughed again and kissed him. 

“I do have that effect on people.” 

“What effect is that?” Adrian closed the door behind him. 

“I broke Trevor’s free will.” Sypha twisted over her shoulder to say.

“Adrian helped, give him some credit.”

“I hope dinner’s nearly ready if you’re going to accuse me of such things.” Adrian came into the kitchen and prodded the contents of the saucepan.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow, Adrian?” Sypha asked, slipping out of Trevor’s arms and guiding Adrian away from the cooker. 

“I... haven’t really thought about it.” Adrian said just a touch too quickly. 

“You’re the one who told us all about how we were destined to defeat your dad.” Trevor shrugged. 

“Certainly, but you did find me sleeping because I was too badly hurt in my previous showdown with him to stay awake. Nerves would be justified… Though I admit I - have been avoiding thinking about it.” 

“I’m nervous.” Sypha said. “You two are just being too proud to admit to it.”

“Well we know what the plan is - get there early, kill as many of them as we have to to stop them doing their ritual, then come home to bed. If it doesn’t work we figure it out as we go along just like usual.” Trevor took the full plates to the table and flapped his hands to shoo the others towards their dinner as he collected his own food.

“Mmm, and I have everything packed so we can get there before sunset and just wait for them to appear from wherever they’re lurking.” Adrian agreed. They all took their seats to eat the food. Sypha leaned over to take Trevor’s hand, gripping it with a particular intensity.

“Whatever happens, this time we will not get separated.” 

“Of course. Close formation, look after each other.” He agreed. 

They should have made it in good time the following day. Everything was packed, all they had to do was roll out of bed into their hunting clothes, have something to eat and get in the car. 

That part worked, but once they set out, nothing seemed to go their way. 

As Sypha pulled onto the motorway, a traffic bulletin informed them that an overturned lorry had closed both carriageways only a few miles away.

“Oh shit, please tell me there’s an alternate route.” She swore. Adrian picked up the sat nav and started to fiddle with it. 

“Ah, not until after that junction I’m afraid, we’ll be stuck for a bit.” He grimaced looking down at the screen. Trevor reached down into the footwell for the bag of snacks. 

It took fifteen minutes to hit the traffic jam, two hours for the road to open up again, and less than an hour more - including a stop at the services to use the toilets - for another accident to slow them down.

“I suppose destiny wants us to meet your dad.” Trevor said. 

“If this were the 1470s that would sound rather nice, but.” Adrian slumped down in his seat with a foot up on the dashboard like a sulky teenager. Sypha looked across to him.

“Well I’m determined to make a good impression… Do you think they would have liked us?”

“Mm, they might. Once father accepted that even a Belmont wouldn’t stoop as low as killing his boyfriend’s dad.” Adrian smiled a little. “Six hundred and fifty years might be a little late though.”

By the time Sypha turned the car onto the tiny lane leading to the field where they were expecting the ritual to be, the sun was below the horizon and they were terribly late. Trevor unhooked the whip from his waist, ready to counter the resistance that must be awaiting them.

A figure dropped in front of the car from behind the hedgerow, and Adrian, who had been practically vibrating with frustration from the drive, was out of the car before Sypha had even hit the brakes. 

Trevor and Sypha both swore as she turned off the engine and scrambled out onto the lane to face what was now three vampires, all dressed like they’d just arrived from the 1960s. 

Adrian had got out of the car so fast he hadn’t even grabbed his sword, so punched the first one of them straight through the hedge he’d just hopped over. Sypha hurled an ice spike through one’s face, as another leapt for her, knocking her to the ground. 

Adrian whirled round, growling, calling his sword to his hand from the passenger seat, but Sypha was already summoning another icy shaft from the earth to shove the vampire off her, impaling him through the shoulder in the process. 

Trevor lashed out his whip and dragged back the vampire Adrian had punched through the hedge, in time for Adrian to gracefully sweep the blade of his sword through both the vampires’ necks. 

“I was really fucking hoping they’d at least let us get out of the car before attacking!” Trevor said. 

“This is going to be slow going isn’t it.” Sypha got up, dusting off her robes.

“We’ll just have to move as quickly as possible.” Adrian sheathed his sword, and set off in the direction of the field and its ancient little mound. 

There was a little patch of woods on the way, and the trees obscured the view of what was happening in the field beyond until they were almost on top of it. The moment Trevor could see the glow of the fires, five more vampires dropped to the ground in front of them, teeth bared, growling. 

Sypha propelled herself up vertically through a gap in the branches with flames shooting from her hands and a barrage of icicles forming in the air beside her. Adrian sent his sword flying straight into the throat of a vampire on one side of him and sprung forward to wrestle another to the ground. Trevor could see an eerie, glowing mist begin to rise from the ground inside the magic circle up ahead, and a vampire preparing to pounce on him. He dived forward and rolled under the vampire as he moved, swinging his sword to hamstring him. 

There was a sickening crunch as Adrian snapped the vampire he was fighting’s head to an unnatural angle and dropped her now lifeless body to the ground. 

Another body hit the earth with one of Sypha’s ice spikes through its head, and Trevor heard the meaty thud and accompanying scream of another finding a target. Over in the field, a handful of robed figures were chanting something and pouring things into a crucible on the ground. 

A blade of ice scythed through the air over Trevor’s face and beheaded the vampire crumpled behind him. He got back to his knees in time to take the head off the one Sypha had impaled from the sky, and tried to catch his breath. 

Adrian was already moving towards the glowing circle and the vampires surrounding it. Trevor followed and caught Sypha out of the corner of his eye as Adrian reached the opaque bubble which had formed over the magic circle. He reached out a hand and was bodily thrown through the air, only catching himself inches from being slammed into a tree trunk. 

The remaining vampires hadn’t even offered any resistance, simply taking to the air with Sypha on their heels as Adrian had broken the cover of the woods. 

“The spell is self-sustaining!” Sypha shouted from the air. Now the ball was rolling, all they could do was wait for it to end. 

Adrian called his sword to his hand and shifted his weight ready to attack as soon as he could. Trevor positioned himself off to one side and nodded to Sypha as she dropped to the ground on his other side. It was a long few minutes, tensed, prepared to strike Dracula as soon as they could reach him, watching as the glow began to fade, and the bubble to shrink,

The opaque clouds inside started to clear and Trevor could make out a slumped human shape inside. He looked to Adrian and saw the realisation cross his face too, his lips starting to relax back over his bared teeth - this silhouette seemed too small… 

The bubble disappeared as it reached person-size. Trevor looked to Sypha to see that she was absolutely as confused as he was, then to Adrian, who looked like he’d seen a ghost. 

“Adrian?” Sypha started to take a step toward him, but Adrian had already flashed to the figure on the ground. 

“Mother?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all give a big welcome to the First Plot Point I had in the outline for this fic. She finally arrived!  
> Before that I was just like "but a modern au tho??" and look how far we've come.
> 
> comments and kudos = love and fuel. Do share if this is making you feel things.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting your partner's parents is always awkward, but some situations are worse for that than others.

The woman flinched away from Adrian. Tentatively, Sypha started to approach; while Trevor hung back. This was not something he could help much with. 

“This is Lisa?” Sypha asked, pausing at Adrian’s side. Lisa was still sitting on the ground, but she was tensed, ready to run or fight.

“How do you know my name?” 

“Mother it’s me, it’s Adrian…” His voice was shaking. He reached out a hand to her.

“I don’t- what?” 

Sypha put a hand on Adrian’s shoulder and guided him back a little, before taking his place on the ground beside Lisa. 

“Lisa, my name is Sypha Belnades. We don’t mean you any harm, and I know this is very confusing… Can you tell me what you know about yourself?”

“My name is Lisa, I am from Lupu, I’m a doctor, and I- I’m sure I’m married but I don’t remember…” She frowned and trailed off, searching for knowledge that should have been at her fingertips. 

“As far as you can tell, what year should it be?”

“Uh, fourteen fifty… seven?”

Sypha looked to Adrian, then back at Lisa. 

“It probably isn’t safe for us to stay here, if you’re happy to come with us, we can explain some things on the way home.”

Lisa nodded slowly, and took the hand Sypha offered her to stand up. All three of them walked over to Trevor, who nodded and turned back towards the car. He kept his hand on the pommel of his whip just in case. 

Sypha talked as they made their way back through the woods, while Adrian quietly lurked behind them.

“Your husband was Vlad Dracula Tepes. You sought him out because legend said he might be able to teach you how to be a doctor. He did, and he fell in love with you, you married and had a son.”

Lisa stopped and turned to Adrian.

“You’re my son?” 

He nodded. She searched his face, but didn’t seem to find what she was looking for. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember…” She reached up to touch his face. A sad smile appeared across her lips. “You remind me of my brother. He had that same set around the eyes… Um, if you’re an adult, how long has it been?”

Adrian took a deep breath and looked to Trevor and Sypha. Sypha nodded carefully. 

“It’s been more than six centuries since - since you died…” His voice cracked as he spoke, and he looked away. Lisa looked horrified.

“Six hundred years? You’ve got to be fucking joking!”

Trevor hadn’t been expecting her to swear, and he laughed. That set Sypha off, then Adrian, then Lisa.

“You had me going for a moment there.” She patted Adrian’s shoulder. His face turned grave again.

“No, I’m sorry.”

She looked him over carefully and pursed her lips.

“Hm. So, Dracula as in the legendary vampire Dracula?” She smiled, good humoured and radiant in spite of everything.

Trevor coughed. Adrian gave a little sigh.

“Yes, the vampire lord Dracula.”

Lisa looked at him closely again. He had left his lips just slightly parted when he spoke, so that someone who knew what they were looking for might spot his teeth. Lisa sighed and wrinkled her nose. 

“That does sound like the sort of thing I’d do.”

They started to head back to the car again, with Adrian trying to fill in broad strokes of all of the everything Lisa had missed. He skirted around the issue of how the three of them had come to be there to greet her, who they were expecting to face when that spell was complete. 

“I’m very interested to hear how medicine has changed in so many years.” Her voice was bright. Trevor wondered at how well she was handling it all.

“Many of the foundations are the same as you learned, but the technology is a different beast. Things Dracula could only have dreamed of when you knew him.”

“I’m so glad Wallachia has come so far.”

“Ah, I was thinking of the world in general. We aren’t actually in Wallachia.”

Lisa sputtered.

“It must be Wallachia, where else would you be?”

“It’s been six hundred and fifty years mother, I haven’t stayed in one place!”

“Well then, why am  _ I _ here?” She stopped, and Adrian paused too. They’d stepped out from under the trees now, and a streetlight up the road was casting enough light to make his eyes glow in the gloom. 

“I don’t know.” He shook his hair and stood straight. “I’m glad you are, and I’m going to take care of you, but I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Trevor, you take the front seat, we’ll sit in the back.” Adrian said when they got back to the car. He opened a door and guided Lisa inside. 

They set out for home in pensive quiet. It wasn’t long at all before Trevor turned to say something banal to Adrian and found Lisa fast asleep. 

“Being brought back from the dead takes it out of you, huh?”

“How sure are we that she’s actually been… brought back?” Sypha said. “I mean, there’s a few things that don’t quite add up.”

“She seems a lot like someone’s mum to me?” Trevor shrugged. Adrian sighed.

“Trevor, do you speak any Romanian?”

“I- no? What?”

“And how much Latin do you have at your disposal?”    
“Only the bits pertaining to monsters, what’s your point?” Trevor was getting the distinct impression of being talked down to.

“Given that, why would my mother, who was born at the other end of the continent, during the fifteenth century, be able to discuss anything at all with you?”

Trevor shuffled in his seat to try and turn further towards Adrian.

“What the fuck. Adrian, what the  _ fuck. _ ”

“I’m concerned that instead of a resurrection, they’ve created a construct of some kind to distract us.” Sypha’s mouth had turned into a hard little line. Adrian leaned in close behind her. His eyes glistened and he looked exhausted.

“A magical simulacrum wouldn’t smell right, I’m certain it’s her.” 

“So why her rather than Dracula?” Sypha said, almost to herself. “We still found the materials to resurrect Dracula, and they still took them…”

“I suppose - if my blood was for this spell, that would explain a lot?” Trevor felt a chill go down his spine. Sypha glanced over at him. 

“Two spells? On this one night?”

“Oh no.” Adrian stiffened suddenly in his seat. “They’re still going to raise him - we have to go back -”   
“No, Adrian we should - we should take care of your mother, right?” Sypha glanced at him in the rear view mirror, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. Trevor reached his arm round the back of his seat as best he could to offer his hand to Adrian.

“And, they’ll tell him she’s here, won’t they, and then he’ll come looking for her, and she’s with us so we deal with it then. Keep just, dealing with what’s in front of us.”

The trip home went much more smoothly than the trip out. Even the traffic lights on the way into town seemed to be more on their side. Lisa awoke a few streets from the flat and stared out of the windows in wonder at all the light. Inside, she frowned at the dark screen of the TV on the wall and the tea in bags while Sypha boiled the kettle and Trevor made sure there was clean bedding in the spare room.

Adrian sat her down on the sofa, speaking quietly of the things he’d seen and what she would find different in the world now. Before long, the chamomile tea was gone and her eyelids were dipping, so he showed her to the spare room and handed her one of his own nightshirts to sleep in before settling back down on the sofa. 

About ten minutes after brushing his teeth and getting into bed, Trevor began to suspect that Adrian was moping rather than coming to join them. He looked at Sypha, and wordlessly, they both headed out into the living room. 

Adrian was perched on the edge of the sofa with one knee tucked under his chin, hair spilling down and hiding most of his face from view. Sypha sat down beside him and leaned into him. Trevor folded his legs under himself and sat on the floor in front, curled his fingers round Adrian’s wrists to stir him from his thoughts.

“Come to bed?”

Adrian looked startled. 

“Sorry, drifted off…”

“We know, that’s why we came to get you.” Sypha squeezed his knee. Trevor rubbed his thumbs along the soft skin under them as Adrian dropped his hands into his lap. He began to unfold from the sofa, and allowed them to guide him back to the bedroom.

He seemed almost dazed, so they took charge, steering him to the bathroom, to the bed. Sypha grabbed a comb and a hair tie and handed them to Trevor. Trevor plaited Adrian’s hair quietly, while she massaged his hands. He was stiff and unyielding, but gradually their caresses and gentle treatment softened him enough to bundle him into bed. Trevor lay facing him, wrapped their fingers around each other while Sypha draped herself across Adrian’s back. Her warm fingers trailed over him and on to Trevor, and entwined like that they drifted off. 

When Trevor slipped out of bed in the morning, he left Adrian and Sypha wrapped up in one another and huffling quietly. 

He started making coffee, humming to himself and bopping around the kitchen. 

“Good morning!”

He jumped and whirled around to find Lisa poking her head round the kitchen cupboards.

“Ah, I’m sorry for startling you. Are you the only one up?” 

“I am, yeah,” Trevor leaned on the worktop while he waited for his heart to slow down. “Did you sleep alright?” 

“Very well, thank you. I thought I might make breakfast for everyone, if you’d help me with finding things?”

“Yeah, I can, why do you want to-”

“You’ve shown me a great deal of hospitality and I’m very grateful, it seems like the least I could do. Now, how many eggs do you have?”

“Uhm…” Trevor counted back how many days it was since anyone had last been shopping and pulled a face. He braced himself and opened the fridge door. “Oh, there’s a big box in here, let’s see - uh, five. They’re large ones at least?” 

Lisa nodded decisively. 

“That’ll work, so, next!” She rubbed her palms together. At her direction, Trevor started digging around the kitchen. He pulled out an assortment of vegetables, a half loaf of almost-stale bread, a bit of cheese, a bowl and some utensils. She directed him in chopping the vegetables, so bright and brusque that it didn’t occur to him to point out that he knew how to handle a kitchen knife until she had a diced half-onion in the frying pan already. 

“Hm, I’ll need salt.”

Trevor opened a cupboard and pulled the salt out. Lisa looked over his shoulder at the jars of spices and gasped. She grabbed Trevor’s shoulders and moved him out of her way to rummage through them, making approving noises at the variety. She turned back with as many jars as she could hold in her hands. 

“He wasn’t kidding about things being better connected now, we would have had to spend months of income on this kind of stuff before I moved to the castle.” She stopped dead, shook herself, started to measure out spices in her palm.

“So, Trevor, how did you all come to be involved?”

Trevor froze. There was absolutely no reason she should be assuming that… but she couldn’t possibly mean  _ involved _ involved rather than just working together or something, surely. Regardless, he had no idea if Adrian would have come out to his mother while she was alive, if he’d choose to do so again straight away - anything, really. And it was all so entangled with  _ Dracula _ which he definitely hadn’t told her much at all about last night. 

“Um, found Adrian in a hole, he told us about some destiny stuff and... Honestly I think that might be much better for him to explain, I’ll go see if he’s up.” He hurried off to the bedroom.

Adrian was awake, with Sypha tucked under his chin, pressing her lips to his throat. He looked at Trevor with heavy eyelids and beckoned to him. 

“Good morning.”

“Jesus, Adrian.” Trevor felt the pull to join them but that would hardly help the situation. “Lisa’s making breakfast and she’s starting to ask questions about us that I really need you to handle.”

Adrian’s eyebrows shot up. 

“Ah.”

“I don’t know how much you want to tell her about your father, and - is she going to be alright with you having a boyfriend as well as a girlfriend?”

“Honestly, probably.” He smiled. “Either way, she’d work it out before long if she’s staying in the flat with us. She’s clever, and we all share one bedroom.”

“Yeah alright, but you should be the one to tell her.” Trevor smiled. 

“I’ll be there in a moment.” Adrian started to get up. Trevor headed back out, with a look over his shoulder to where Sypha was flopping out of bed with a half-hearted scowl. 

Lisa was whisking eggs in the kitchen. She smiled when Trevor came out, and he smiled back, bobbing nervously as he waited for Adrian to join them. 

He finally swept in, with Sypha in tow. 

“I think we ought to do proper introductions.” Adrian stood tall, every inch the vampire prince, despite the slightly loose pyjama bottoms he’d stolen from Trevor’s drawer. “Doctor Lisa Tepes, I would like to introduce you to Trevor Belmont, vampire hunter of House Belmont; and Sypha Belnades, magician of the Speakers. So that there is no confusion or surprise in it later, we are, all three of us… romantically involved.”

The commanding tone dropped as he concluded, and he raised his chin a tiny bit higher, as if begging her to accept it. Her brow furrowed a touch, but she was smiling.

“It’s lovely to make your acquaintance.” She nodded at Trevor and Sypha both. “I’m making breakfast, I hope everyone will have some?”

They all attacked the spread with gusto. Trevor hadn’t realised how desperately hungry he still was after last night, and the food was terrific. 

“Mmm, is it paprika in this, Lisa, it’s lovely!” Sypha said.

“Yes! I was very impressed with all the spices you have!”

“Did she teach you to cook, Adrian?” Sypha turned to him with her eyes bright as could be.

Adrian paused and nodded silently.

“Ah, spice buns…” Lisa smiled and reached along the side of the table to squeeze Adrian’s wrist. He froze, and Trevor caught a quiver in him. 

“Spice buns.” Adrian whispered. “Um, I need to just-” and he got up and hurried out of the room. Trevor and Sypha exchanged a look. 

“You go.” Sypha said, then turned to Lisa “Tell me about these buns!”

Adrian was curled up in a corner of the bedroom. 

“You okay?” Trevor asked, knowing he wasn’t. Adrian looked up with red-rimmed eyes and sniffled a little.

“I’m... It’s just - a lot.” 

Trevor sat down alongside him with an arm around his shoulders and held him tight.

“You don’t need to do this, I just need a minute to pull myself together.” Adrian rested his head on Trevor’s shoulder and sighed.

“Cup of tea?” Trevor asked.

“Mm, please.” Adrian slipped his hand up Trevor’s forearm and gave his hand a quick, warm squeeze. “I promise I’ll be alright in a minute.”

Trevor squeezed his hand back and got up. 

“I know. I’ll put the kettle on.”

“So there’s this one story that says somewhere under that town there’s a force that will oppose great evil, and other stories suggesting there would be some evil due to rise, so I was like, okay, let’s see what I can find.” Sypha’s hands moved as if weaving the threads of her story together. “And I’m digging around in these catacombs under this deconsecrated church, when a section of roof falls in and this  _ scruffy _ man lands nearly on top of me!”

“Oh come on, Sypha, you were at least two feet away from where I landed.” Trevor protested on his way to the kettle. 

“Are you going to try and tell me you wouldn’t be alarmed to have a man the size of you fall through a ceiling at that distance?”

“You were still exaggerating about how close it was.” Trevor smiled. 

“And that was Trevor? What were you looking for down there?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah I’d hit some dodgy floorboards in the cellar above it.”

Sypha’s eyes glittered and she spread her hands wide;

“His nana’s diary said she had concealed a powerful weapon.”

“Typical vague destiny bullshit, I should’ve known better than to go looking.” Trevor raised his voice above the sound of boiling water. 

“Do you regret what you found?” Adrian had appeared from the bedroom. He looked a little fragile, but was smirking like he always did when opportunities to mess with Trevor presented themselves. Trevor smiled at him.

“As long as I assume I’d have got myself in as much trouble without you, I don’t regret it.” 

Lisa got up from the table and went over to Adrian.

“Are you alright?” She took his hands and looked up at him. His nostrils flared, his lip wobbled, and his paper-thin composure collapsed. A huge sob erupted from his chest and within a moment he was wrapped in Lisa’s arms with his head on her shoulder. 

“I just - when you died it was so awful - and everything was horrible for so  _ long _ , and now you’re here and I had no warning, I couldn’t prepare myself-” He broke off into breathless sobbing again, and Lisa pulled him in tight to her, stroking his hair and making soothing noises. Her eyes were steely. When he was taking more steady, regular breaths rather than desperately gulping air like he was half-drowned, she shifted him back to arm’s length and looked him in the eye.

“Adrian, I- if you can’t really tell me, I understand, but - what happened to me?”

Adrian drew in a big breath. 

“Let’s take a seat. I uh -” He looked over her shoulder to Trevor and Sypha. “Would you…”

Sypha somehow picked up the unspoken words.

“Yeah, we’ll be downstairs.” She nodded to Trevor, and he followed her down to the office.

“I don’t envy him having to have that conversation.” Trevor admitted as they settled down in the armchairs by the desk. 

“It’s a difficult one. I wonder how he’ll approach it.”

“Yeah. ‘so the church executed you for witchcraft then dad went absolutely apeshit’ might not be the most sensitive way to approach it.”

Sypha sighed. 

“It’s funny, I always sort of assumed he took after his father but -”

“Yeah it’s… She’s definitely his mother.” It was clear enough that Dracula’s blood had lent Adrian’s face its ethereal perfection, but the structure underlying it, his expressions, was all Lisa, not Vlad Tepes. 

“And she’s so charming, I’m like - it suddenly makes sense how she got away with just turning up at Dracula’s house, you know?”

“It’s definitely weird to develop a crush on your boyfriend’s mum, just so you know.” Trevor said.

“I think he’d forgive me.” Sypha stuck her chin out.

“Let’s not test it by telling him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so difficult holy shit. I'm not expecting better from the next few so your patience and encouragement are deeply appreciated.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> family bonding times as Lisa gradually has the gaps in her knowledge filled in

Adrian texted when he’d told the story.

In the flat, Lisa was curled around a cup of tea on the sofa. 

“For heaven’s sake you never effect any change by  _ indiscriminate _ killing.”

“He stopped trying to make anyone change very quickly. It became a war to bring about an  _ end _ . He was ready even to let his generals starve in service of it.”

“And to almost kill his own son... Adrian, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “It makes sense that he wouldn’t react well, but you should have been safe. Was that the end of it at least?”

Adrian sighed and shook his head.

“It began a cycle that seems to repeat indefinitely. Every so often someone decides he should have the chance to do it again and brings- or tries to bring him back.”

“How many times have you tried to tear each other apart?”

“We haven’t every time but - a couple. I’ve never since had to face him alone, at least.” Adrian looked up at Trevor and Sypha where they’d stopped by the door. Lisa followed his gaze.

“That’s what they meant about being destined to find you?”

“The cycle keeps going, ropes in whoever is appropriate. Often a Belmont, a magician, sometimes other people they associate with.” Adrian confirmed. 

“Sets traps for the sort of people it needs in their great grandmother’s diaries, that sort of thing.” Trevor said.

“And you don’t resent being dragged in?” Lisa smiled.

“No. He’s worth the trouble.” Trevor could see Sypha nodding her agreement beside him. “I don’t know if you exactly remember being his mum but you should be proud of him, how he’s turned out.”

Some time in the middle of the afternoon, Adrian began to yawn. He’d been going through some history books with Lisa, and had to try three times to get through a sentence without interruption from his own body. 

“Adrian, did you sleep okay?” Sypha looked up from her laptop as he rubbed his eyes.

“Not really, no. Maybe for three hours or so.”

“No better excuse for a nap.” Trevor got up from his seat and offered his hand to Adrian. 

“You definitely slept a lot more than I did.” Adrian raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yesterday was damn tiring though, and you sleep better when you’re not alone.”

Adrian rolled his eyes, smiling. Trevor offered his other hand to Sypha, as Adrian turned to Lisa. 

“Would you mind, if we step out for an hour or so?”

“Certainly not, you need to rest, and I have plenty to read.”

They stretched out under the bedding with their hands wrapping around one another. Trevor pulled Adrian’s back tight against him, and tangled his fingers with Sypha’s. Adrian twisted so he could see Trevor’s face. He arched his back and hummed a happy little noise.

“Suddenly I’m not really thinking about sleeping.” He said. Trevor’s eyes drifted across Adrian’s face, taking in his slightly rumpled hair, half closed eyelids, softly parted lips…

“What are you thinking about instead?”

Sypha wriggled in closer so her face was pressed against Adrian’s cheek.

“I bet I can guess.” She said, and turned his head towards her to claim a kiss. 

In the tangle of mouths and bodies, Trevor found himself underneath Adrian, who hushed him when he let out a groan at the weight in his lap. 

“We have company, remember?” 

Adrian put his mouth on Sypha’s, his hand in Trevor’s hair. Sypha’s hand ran down Trevor’s hip, and a sharp flick of her wrist rearranged both her lovers’ underwear enough to take hold of their cocks in one hand. Trevor clenched his jaw to stifle the moan.

Sypha pulled at Adrian.

“Come here-” she gasped, and Adrian shifted off Trevor’s lap and toward Sypha, then pushed himself down the bed and under the covers. 

“I meant-” She began to protest, but stopped as the duvet lifted on her knee and the crown of Adrian’s head dipped into the dark between her legs. She tipped her head back and opened her mouth, forming a silent “oh!”. She took hold of Trevor’s hand. He took that as a cue to come in close to her, and she pulled him into a kiss, muffling her whimpers in his mouth. 

When she came it was silent, her brows pulling in tight above screwed-closed eyes as she bucked into Adrian’s mouth. She pushed his head away with a tiny noise and, after she caught her breath, squirmed out from under his hands to climb on top of Trevor instead.

He let out a big breath when he felt the heat of her on his cock, slowly working her way down the length of him, teasing him. Adrian pulled himself up alongside Trevor and dragged his lips across his throat and onto his mouth. 

Between Sypha clenching round his cock and Adrian’s lips and tongue taking possession of his mouth, Trevor felt like he was being pulled to pieces, and couldn’t keep quiet indefinitely. Teeth pulled gently at his lip and he whimpered. Adrian threw a hand over Trevor’s mouth.

“Will it be easier for you to keep quiet if I give you something to do with your mouth?” His voice was low, almost threatening, but it felt like forever since they’d allowed themselves to be rough with each other, and Trevor nodded eagerly. Adrian grinned and moved his hand to kiss him again, with more teeth this time, enough to hurt. 

He pulled himself up the bed and dragged Trevor’s head down towards his cock. Trevor stuck his tongue out and licked up the shaft, noted how Adrian stiffened and hissed at the teasing.

“Don’t you be the one to make a noise now.” Sypha said, between harsh breaths. Adrian narrowed his eyes at her, silently seething. 

Trevor took Adrian’s cock into his mouth. He pressed his tongue against the underside of it as he moved his head down the length of him, noting the odd, tense squeak Adrian made trying not to moan out loud. Adrian’s hand reached out and took one of Sypha’s, desperate for something to hang on to. He gasped when a movement of Sypha’s prompted Trevor to swallow him to stifle a moan. He tugged sharply on Trevor’s hair and swore under his breath.

“Christ.” Trevor panted. “I feel like a bloody teenager, I don’t remember the last time I had to be so furtive about fucking.”

Adrian’s upper lip began to curl back into a snarl. His teeth were gritted and his eyebrows knotted together, a perfect picture of frustration. 

Sypha slowed to a stop and stroked his hair. 

“To be fair, we’re probably not fooling anyone when the floorboards have been creaking this whole time.” She pointed out. Adrian flopped down onto the mattress with a whine of frustration and it was clear the moment had passed. They rearranged themselves back in the bed as if to sleep. 

Adrian was scowling.

“I’m all wound up now.”

“We’ve already tried the one idea I’d have to help.” Trevor leaned over to rest his head on his shoulder. 

“If we’re not going to nap, maybe it’s time to start on dinner?” Sypha suggested. “I think we’ve got stuff for a stew in.”

Their next few days passed fairly unremarkably. Lisa was getting the hang of the 21st Century admirably, and the conversations she and Adrian were having were becoming less about filling in the gaps in her knowledge, and more about setting her up to have a life. 

On the roof, Trevor was dodging conjured snowballs again, since it attracted less attention than fire after dark. When the summer came around and they’d sighted the first circus skills hippies putting up their slackline in the park; then it would be safe to play with fire and pretend they were practising an act. Adrian and Lisa sat to one side, bundled up against the cold as the sky darkened. 

“It’s selfish of me, I think, but I wish I could remember being your mother.” Lisa said. “You’ve become a very good man, and it would be nice to know that I contributed to it.”

“I assure you, you did more than your fair share. There are an awful lot of things you taught me that I’ve carried with me ever since.”

Sypha finally managed to catch Trevor square in the face, and whooped as he dropped on to the ground and rolled to his knees, spluttering and swearing. 

“Have you carried anything positive from your father?”

“Certainly - while I was growing up, he was a wonderful teacher. It’s hard not to feel like it’s a little tainted by what’s happened since, but…”

“Does it seem odd that he hasn’t turned up looking for Lisa yet?” Sypha wondered aloud. She strolled over to Trevor and offered a hand to help him up. 

“Would it be too much to hope that they failed to raise him?” Trevor dusted himself off, and they both walked over for the flasks of hot tea at Adrian’s feet. 

“Probably, they were effective enough in getting all their materials together after all.” Sypha frowned.

“They’re probably just regrouping or trying to trace us.” Adrian said, gloomily. Trevor took a seat facing him. Sypha settled down against Trevor's side, stealing his warmth.  


“And when - if - he does turn up, do you have a plan to deal with him?”  


“I have… sort of been avoiding thinking about it. Mother, he’ll probably expect you to go with him.” He winced as he turned to Lisa.

“Even knowing I only barely remember him?”

“We don’t know how much they’ll have -” Trevor stopped speaking as a shadow fell across them. Adrian and Lisa froze, looking up over Trevor’s head, and Trevor followed their gaze. 

Floating a few feet above the parapet of the roof; eight feet tall, with garnet-red eyes focused razor-sharp on Lisa; was Vlad Dracula Tepes. 

In a fraction of a second, Adrian was between Dracula and Lisa, and a brief moment later, Trevor and Sypha had leapt to their feet either side of him, ready to fight.

“Lisa…” Dracula’s face softened almost imperceptibly, and he floated toward them. Lisa stood, placed a hand on Adrian’s shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she nodded, jaw set and eyes steely, and he moved out of her way. She stepped forward and bowed as Dracula’s feet softly landed on the roof. 

“I didn’t dare believe, Lisa…”

She raised a hand to stop him.

“I don’t know what your people have told you about the state they brought me back in, but I don’t know you. If Adrian hadn’t chosen to fill in some of the blanks, all I would remember about you is…” She stood up straighter and raised her chin. Her voice took on a darker tone. “The first time you propositioned me.”

Dracula’s eyebrows twitched upwards and he flinched back a half-step.

“Something essential in you would have recognised me, what we are to each other. No span of time would change that.”

Lisa’s lip curled.

“I don’t believe that kind of magical thinking is much like you. I’d like to think better of you, but that goes for a lot of things apparently.”

A flush of red passed across Dracula’s eyes. He snarled.

“Everything I have done since they took you away from me has been for you!”

“Did you consider if I would have wanted it done, Vlad? How many times did our son stand before you, reminding you that it is not what I would have wanted to come of my death, and yet you carried on! From the very first day I walked into that castle, _all_ I wanted for you was acknowledgement that humanity was worthy of more than scorn. Of course individual humans, and human institutions can be short-sighted and foolish or purely malicious, but that doesn’t justify writing off humanity as a whole. And then what did you go and do?”

“Anyone could have opposed what they did to you and they didn’t…”

“How much good would that do in the face of a church that would try and write  _ you _ off as a toothless threat?” She paused to catch her breath, her hands clenched at her sides. “I don’t even know how much that matters, after so long. I  _ do _ care about why I’m back now, if they’ve said anything to you?”

It was probably safe to say that whatever Dracula had been expecting from this meeting, this wasn’t it. He grimaced, looking down at her, appearing to search for what she might want to hear.

“They feel the world has suffered for lack of leadership, that I am the one who can bring order back to the children of the night, and that having my wife by my side will help me to do it.” He took a half step forward and began to offer her his hand. She didn’t move. 

“And how does extensively modifying my memory help with that?”

“I don’t - sometimes memory can be fragile Lisa, I’m sure they wouldn’t intentionally-”

“Do you remember me speaking any English at all before? They installed that in my mind, why shouldn’t I assume they erased things I ought to remember?”

He put up his hands.

“They wouldn’t hurt you, they work in my service.”

Adrian stepped forward and placed a hand on Lisa’s arm.

“They came for one of mine in spite of that, father. And for the purpose of mother’s resurrection. I know you’ve indulged yourself when a scheme can have such pleasing symmetry, regardless of loyalties and alliances.”

Dracula looked from his wife to his son and back, jaw clenched and eyes blazing. 

“Lisa…”

She didn’t react. He dropped his gaze and swallowed hard.

“I will - I will be back, Lisa, Adrian.” He nodded, his feet lifted from the ground, and he exploded into a cloud of bats which scattered into the sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have accidentally become very invested in Draculisa?? even I wasn't really expecting the story to take me this way. 
> 
> If you follow me on tumblr (@sweetlyfez) you may have noticed I am having some lil struggles w/ this all because the story has carried itself off in a direction I wasn't really expecting. It'll be... fine? I think?


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dracula has taken some time to think.

Things went eerily quiet for a few days. Sypha sent out word to everyone who knew enough to not be panicked by it that yes, they had failed to prevent the resurrection of Dracula, he had a few potential reasons to be absolutely fucking furious, and they weren’t exactly sure where he was. Laurel rang immediately to shout about how she’d “Fucking told you so, Sypha!”, so loudly that Trevor could hear her from the other side of the room. 

Everything slowed down and it felt like everyone in the flat, and the handful of contacts who were in on the details of what had happened, were holding their breath, assessing every unusual thing in case it was a sign.

Then, over breakfast after a rough night where barely anyone had got enough sleep, and the bed had felt like it contained far, far too many elbows, Sypha’s phone beeped, and was handed around the table for everyone to look at the picture she’d received. What had been a broad swathe of ex-industrial wasteland near the railway line a few miles away, was now occupied by the vast and improbable shape of Dracula’s castle. 

“Is there anything else we need to pack before we set off?” Adrian asked. 

“No, we’re set, just need to get dressed and get moving.” Trevor said, mostly to his porridge. Adrian turned to Lisa.

“You don’t need to come with us-”

“You really think I’d choose not to?”

He nodded and smiled, just a tiny bit, and then they were on the move. 

“I miss summer.” Sypha sighed. In the broken-up tarmac around the base of the castle, it was clear there were things lurking. On a sunshiny July day it’d be far too bright for lurking, even in the shadow of the towers and buttresses of Dracula’s home. 

“It’ll come again.” Lisa stated. “God this is weird.”

“Do you- remember much about the castle?” Adrian asked.

“Mostly I remember that the first time I came to it I had no idea what the fuck I was walking into. And now I don’t remember what I walked into.” She looked distant. “He was ever so lonely.”

“He’s got plenty of company now, by the looks of it. Not that most night creatures are much for conversation.” Trevor was scanning over the ground between them and the huge castle doors, picking out the creatures which might intercept them. “Probably best we go see what we can do before these beasties start creeping out into the rest of the neighbourhood, eh?”

They formed up and stepped into the shadow of the castle. The leather coils of the whip were a reassuring weight in Trevor’s hand as he watched the nearest creature he could see. 

In his peripheral vision he could see the glow of magic at Sypha’s side, and the glint of light off the blade floating just in front of Adrian.

A shadow he’d been keeping an eye on hissed softly as they came close. Its shape got tighter, and Trevor moved his weight on to the balls of his feet, let his knees be looser, dropped his shoulders and saw Adrian and Sypha make similar adjustments to their stances in response. 

A long moment of tension, two more strides forward, and the thing pounced. It had long limbs and a horse-like face, but decidedly un horse-like teeth. Sypha got it first, blasting a hole through its chest with a bolt of fire thrown underarm from her hip. 

It went down with a gurgling wail, and then every second brought a new monster emerging from a hiding place towards them. 

“Stay close, keep moving forward, don’t get separated!” Trevor shouted, lunging forward and sending glossy leather looping out in front of him to knock something reptilian out of the air. Adrian’s sword whistled by to slice something’s head off, and Sypha’s arms whirled, raining fire and ice on anything within range. 

Lisa had been right behind him, and he had no idea if she still was until he rolled to dodge an armful of claws and saw her slash her knife across a creature’s face as it lunged towards her, find her balance, and stab up through its throat. The clawed arm Trevor had avoided dropped to the ground, neatly sliced from the shoulder by Adrian’s blade, and the wounded creature turned away from Trevor, giving him chance to garotte it with the whip and drive a dagger into its chest. 

Their progress was steady, and before long the monsters were noticeably retreating from them.

“Is he letting us in?” Sypha was holding a flame at the ready, back-to-back with Adrian.

“No, this is… He’s not controlling them at all, just letting them wander.”

“Well, if he follows their lead and decides we’re enough trouble to back off, I’ll take it.” Trevor said.

“Unlikely, I’m afraid.” Adrian gave him a small smile. “Though I applaud your optimism.” He looked up at the castle doors, looming up in front of them. Adrian took the lead as they took the steps up to the front of the castle, with Lisa alongside him. He hammered his fist on the doors.

“Dracula! I approach you as Alucard Tepes, son of Lisa of Lupu. Your keep has been landed in my territory without my leave.” He stood absolutely still. He was taking a breath as if to shout something else, when there was a grinding sound, and the doors creaked open, just enough to let them in. 

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you playing the diplomat before.” Trevor said, as they entered.

It was gloomy inside, with only enough lights on to make out the edges of the grand hallway. Adrian looked from side-to-side, then set off at a brisk stride up the hallway with Lisa on his heels. Trevor looked to Sypha, who shrugged, and they followed. 

It was eerily quiet. Sypha, looking around in wonder, turned to whisper something and it sounded so loud that Trevor shushed her.

“There’s so much magic woven into this place!”

“He’ll hear us Sypha!”

“He’ll hear us anyway.” Adrian stood at the intersection of a couple of corridors, turning his head this way and that. He tapped his ear. “Finely attuned to the sound of a human heart. He’s in his study.”

He’d barely finished the word when Lisa pushed past him, taking the lead with no sign of any doubt in where she was heading. 

“Mother-” Adrian said, but she threw a single look over her shoulder and he abandoned his protest and just followed. 

A few more turns in the labyrinth of corridors, and Trevor could see light spilling through an open door. Adrian jogged to catch up with Lisa before she reached it, then they both paused in the doorway.

“Vlad?”

“You came?”

They stepped inside the room as Trevor and Sypha came near enough to see what had paused them. Dracula was curled up in a huge wing-backed chair in front of a low fire. His eyes were hollow and red, cheeks tearstained, and he’d grown stubble around the beard and moustache that had been clipped to razor-sharp edges when they’d last seen him. Lisa took a seat on a footstool near him. 

“Your monsters are wandering around outside the castle. They’re going to hurt someone, Vlad. We're here for their sakes.” She was so poised in the face of his misery, voice sympathetic but not forgiving. Dracula curled in on himself even more.

His hands clenched a couple of times, he huffed, looked at his wife, then up at his son, standing tensely beside her like a guard dog.

“I’ve let you both down, haven’t I.”

“That’s pretty much the situation.” Adrian agreed. Dracula nodded slowly, wearily.

“If you’ve come to put me down, make it stick this time.” 

“If I knew how...” 

“That isn’t what we want to do.” Lisa took one of his hands. “Get your shit together and take charge of your night creatures, and it won’t be necessary.”

“Probably make the castle less conspicuous too?” Sypha suggested. Trevor gave her an incredulous look. Like this was the time for maintaining the neighbourhood’s aesthetic.

“What good is living when so much of my existence was  _ wasted _ ?” Dracula spat. “Generations of rage and all I achieved was making you hate me.”

Lisa sat up straighter, looked down on him where he was slumped down in the chair.

“There’s something you told me, the night you first tried to make me yours.” She was staring him down with no sign of fear. Adrian’s gaze was flicking fast between his parents. Lisa continued; “The greatest luxury of immortality is that it’s never too late. I won’t try to tell you you didn’t piss away the last six hundred years in fury, or that you haven’t fucked up a lot of other people’s lives in the process, but you have that luxury, always, of being able to try again. It’s funny, that’s pretty much the last thing I remember...”

She drifted off for a moment, then froze; on seeing her expression, Dracula did too, both of them looking like something had just fallen into place.

“Lisa,” He said, pulling himself halfway out of his slump. “You don’t think?”

“If anyone knew about it?”

“I only ever told one person, but there was nothing to stop them passing it on.” He said. They both looked very serious, holding eye contact, and leaving so much unspoken that Trevor was beginning to tune out.

“One is very suggestible in that early stage, right?” Lisa said. “They could have convinced me I agreed to it, stripped the humanity from me and handed me over to aid whatever destruction they were hoping for.”

She was shaking. Dracula had moved forward in his seat to clasp her hands, his eyes wild.

“Mother, I don’t understand.” Adrian’s knuckles had gone white on the hilt of his sword. Lisa turned, looked at him, then back at Dracula. 

“Did we tell him about that night?”

“No. I was ashamed. Afraid he wouldn’t forgive me.”

Lisa turned. 

“Come sit, Adrian. Trevor, Sypha, you too.” She took a breath to steel herself.

_ Patients were starting to visit more frequently now. Small illnesses, some injuries, and they were going away with things that should cure them.  _

_ Radu had been ill for a while, but he had found it increasingly easier to breathe on the medicine Vlad had recommended. She was worried about the side-effects, but Vlad promised his lungs would clear before the nausea and digestive issues and fatigue overtook him. But then Radu’s wife came, and told them he had died. Lisa felt betrayed, almost stormed off home then and there, but Vlad requested that the body be brought to them, so they could make certain he hadn’t been killed by anything that might spread, and when he arrived, Radu’s skin was yellowed like the old books in the library, not simply grey where the life had gone. Lisa couldn’t bear to watch the autopsy, even as a learning opportunity, and shut herself in her room.  _

_ “Lisa, I’m sorry. If I had known how late he was in asking for help, I would have prepared you for the possibility…” _

_ “What?” _

_ “The sickness had spread. The growths in his lungs were shrinking, he would have had a few years to enjoy, but his liver was failing.” _

_ It hurt to lose him. They had become friends as he visited regularly for more medicine and to check-in, and she had been promised they would see him better. She was inconsolable, refused food, refused wine. Vlad came to her that night with an offer. _

_ “You needn't steep yourself in their suffering, needn't face this pain over and over again. You wondered, in the very first week, if my perspective had been skewed by my immortality.” He sat down beside her on the bed, huge, looming, but determined to be gentle. “I wouldn’t say skewed, I would say, expanded. Knowing all mortal things are so brief and fragile, it is easier to be pragmatic about any individual one, even as you cherish them… Radu might have recovered, if we had been given the opportunity to treat him sooner. The great luxury of immortality is never being too late for  _ anything _ , Lisa.” _

_ “What are you suggesting??” _

_ “Your passion and courage have stirred things in me I thought long dead, and... I want you to join me for eternity.” His teeth gleamed in the firelight. Lisa looked up at him, torn between horror and fury. _

_ “Who are you to offer eternity when you can’t weather one evening of grief? You think I hoped to escape mortality? I hoped to improve it, to share knowledge and help each man’s learning outlive him; to help humanity, not to  _ leave _ it! How  _ dare _ you.”  _

_ Vlad threw up his hands and retreated from her savage disappointment, and Lisa packed her bags to leave for home. _

“I went to her before she left. I was certain she was set on it and I’d lost her forever, but I didn’t wish her to go back into the world thinking so poorly of me. And I am still sorry for that night, Lisa.”

“I know.”

“Though,I have never regretted what I learned from it.” Dracula smiled at Lisa, utterly lost in her. 

Adrian rubbed a hand under his eye. 

“I remember asking why she was mortal when you could have...” His voice was thick, a little hoarse. 

“And I told you that her humanity was precious, that we treasure a temporary thing in ways we can’t treasure something permanent, and I hardly remember what else. But I didn’t admit that I had made an ill-considered offer and she had refused me.”

Adrian turned to his mother.

“And that’s the most recent memory you have from before?”

She nodded, a light of excitement coming back into her eye now they were returning to the puzzle.

“Yes! And newly turned vampires are suggestible, easy for their sires to convince of damn near anything, so imagine -” She put a hand on Adrian’s arm. “If you hadn’t been hot on their trail and they’d been there to meet me the second the spell ended, I could have been turned, fed all kinds of ideas about having chosen this, about whatever it is they wanted to do with us, and then handed off to him a few days later as a welcome back present.”

“I dread to think what they’re hoping to achieve.” Adrian ran his fingers through his hair. 

“That will be the next thing to think about, I suppose.” Sypha said. “So long as we are past having to worry about any parents trying to wipe out a species?” She looked sidelong at Dracula. He  _ smiled _ at her, and Trevor was still reeling at the bizarre confluence of events that had led to that, when Dracula smiled again at Lisa.

“I can’t summon that kind of fury, for some reason.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really wish I had the power to give someone a dressing down that made them reassess all their life choices.
> 
> comments and kudos fuel the beast and her typing fingers.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevor is perturbed to find that he is now expected to just *hang out* with Dracula.

Dracula stood, towering over them all. He strolled over to a side-table and inscribed a sigil on it with one long claw. A shimmer passed through the room.

“That will restrain the monsters.” He straightened up again and surveyed them all. “I think I shall camouflage the castle from mortal eyes but leave it visible to others. The followers who raised Lisa and I will come looking for me, and I will - discuss - what they intended.”

Adrian arched an eyebrow at him, took a breath in, then appeared to change his mind about commenting. He pursed his lips.

“Then I think we should like to retire to our own space, for the time being. You’ll contact us, when they get in touch?”

“Certainly.” Dracula paused. “Actually… it might be nice to… I mean, I would like to invite you all to dinner.”

Trevor tensed, hoping that Adrian might have spontaneously developed psychic powers that could pick up the litany in Trevor’s head of ‘ _ please do not make me sit at a dinner table with fucking _ Dracula  _ I know he’s your dad but what the fuck. _ ’

“We would be pleased to accept.” Adrian said. 

Fuck. Trevor glanced over at Sypha, but she didn’t appear to share his concerns, standing as relaxed as she had been throughout. Lisa stood and took Adrian’s hand.

“Perhaps I should stay here. You’ve all taken good care of me, but you should have your space back.”

“Really?” Adrian frowned. “I would worry about leaving you to fend for yourself so far from what you’re used to.”

“I haven’t struggled so far” Lisa smiled.

“But-”

“We don’t know the extent of their interference in my mind.” She pointed out. “Given what I’ve coped with so far, which, you know, intellectually speaking; I know I should have found utterly astounding; I think they primed me to handle it, somehow.”

“You have dealt with waking up seven centuries late a lot better than anyone would have expected.” Sypha offered over Lisa’s shoulder.

“Well I- I trust your confidence, mother. You know how to contact us if you need to.” Adrian looked rather grave, but didn’t argue any further.

They were halfway home before Trevor broke the thoughtful silence. 

“I can’t believe you agreed to dinner.” 

“It seemed the diplomatic thing to do.”

“He’s very tall, isn’t he.” Sypha said, in the same sort of tone as you might observe that something in the oven smells delicious. She turned her head in time to catch the look on Trevor’s face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Trevor rolled his eyes.

“You know why.”

Sypha merely blinked at him for a long moment with her big, blue eyes, as if she had no idea what he was implying.

The kettle went on the second they got home, but after that the purpose slipped from their actions a little bit. Adrian frowned at the bookcase, Sypha frowned at the internet, Trevor fiddled with a couple of knives that wanted sharpening. They gradually orbited closer to one another, until they were all together on the sofa, doing what they had been doing, slowing down, and stopping. 

Sypha got up to take her empty cup out to the kitchen and dropped into Adrian’s lap when she came back, twining her arms around his neck.

“Hello.” He stroked one hand up her side. 

“Hi.” Sypha smiled. She tilted her head back to smile at Trevor too. “I like your mother a lot but… it is a relief to have our privacy back.”

Trevor saw the glint in her eye as she dropped her chin, and the way Adrian’s face moved to match it, and then they were tangled in a languorous kiss. Sypha pulled away grinning, and moved her hand to cup Trevor’s chin and kiss him, with Adrian’s gaze following her hand, his lips following hers to Trevor’s mouth when she gave him room. 

“I’ve missed having you two all to myself.” Adrian said, eyes flickering between his lovers’ faces. Trevor cleared his throat and pulled himself forward from where they’d pinned him into the sofa cushions.

“Last one to bed is a rotten egg.” He ducked under Sypha’s arm and tried not to stumble when he banged his shin on the coffee table. There was a shriek and a laugh behind him as Adrian and Sypha jumped up from the sofa in pursuit. 

The four strides lead was enough to get Trevor into the bedroom first, but he felt the air move as he crossed the threshold and Adrian appeared beside him in a red blur.

“Oh, that’s cheating!” Sypha shouted. 

“She’s right.” Trevor said, then yelped as Adrian twirled him around and pushed, so he ended up on his back on the bedding. Adrian slid up the length of Trevor’s body and twined their fingers together. 

He froze when Sypha came up behind him and hooked her fingers into his hipbones.

“You are in  _ trouble _ , Adrian.”

He bit his lip and slowly turned to look over his shoulder at her. 

“Nobody said I had to use my legs.” He batted his eyelashes.

“And me not freezing your arse to the sofa wasn’t a clue this was a magic free contest?”

“Mm.” Adrian pouted a little. He dropped an elbow beside Trevor’s head so he could twist and look at Sypha better. “Is there anything I can do to earn your forgiveness?”

“Accept that cheating has made  _ you _ the rotten egg-”

He sighed.

“Agreed.”

“ _ And _ get off Trevor and let me at him.”

“Oh!” Trevor hadn’t expected that. Adrian gave him a toothy kiss and withdrew. 

Sypha threw off her top and leggings and slinked up at Trevor’s side. Her fingers released his belt and the fastenings on his trousers, pushed his t-shirt up to expose his belly. 

Her lips found his. From the corner of his eye he could see Adrian throwing off his own clothes with eyes fixed firmly on them, then Trevor’s world was only Sypha’s mouth and hands and being pulled over her so her legs could wrap around him. She peeked out at Adrian from under Trevor and winked.

Trevor jumped when his trousers and boxers were abruptly removed, and Adrian’s cool hands smoothed across his hips. Sypha snaked a hand down between them and grasped Trevor’s cock. She gave him a slow, firm stroke that made his breath catch, then moved her fingers to herself. 

He let out a desperate little hum as she wriggled underneath him, a smile passing across her lips, and then she took hold of him again, pressed herself up and pulled him down into her. She sighed happily, and behind them Adrian ran his fingernails up across Trevor’s buttocks as he buried himself in Sypha. 

She set the pace, hooking her heels around Trevor’s legs to control the angle so every stroke hit just where she wanted it. As her breath became harsher, Trevor could hear Adrian behind him, watching them, probably prowling for a good opportunity to jump in. As he lay down beside them on the bed, Sypha clenched and came with a shout. Adrian’s hands looped around her and Trevor moved back to let him pull her into another kiss. She squirmed to get herself on top of Adrian and grinned down at him. Trevor lay down so he too could look up at her. 

Adrian ran a hand up across Sypha’s body.

“May I make a suggestion?” he asked. Sypha nodded, and in a moment Adrian had flipped them. She giggled and hooked her heels around him, but he reached down and pressed his fingers into her instead. 

She arched her back into it and sighed. In the shuffle she had ended up a little further down the bed, and when she turned her head and her eyes caught Trevor’s cock inches from her face, she glanced up at him and grinned.

“Oh!” Trevor said. Then, “Ohhh…” as she moved her hand to hold his cock and ran her tongue right up the underside of it, bringing a hot, wet friction against where it flared out. 

Trevor sighed as Sypha wriggled on Adrian’s fingers and wrapped her lips around the head of Trevor’s cock. 

He let his eyelids drop him into darkness and the sensations build the growing tension in his belly. Sypha moaned sweetly and Adrian whispered encouragement to her, and shifted his weight on the bed. 

Trevor opened his eyes in time to see Adrian sink himself into Sypha with a rapturous expression and a soft groan. He bit his lip and began a few slow thrusts to set the rhythm. He lowered himself over Sypha’s body to kiss her neck, then moved across her face to run his own tongue over Trevor’s cock. He looked up with a wicked glint in his eye when Trevor gasped. 

Sypha shifted to kiss Adrian and stroked her hand up Trevor’s cock. Then she and Adrian both turned their attention to Trevor, and his awareness dissolved down to just the hands and mouths on him, the soft noises they were making as they moved against each other, and the pull in his gut.

Sypha came, shuddering, and went limp for a moment with her eyes glazed before curling up towards Adrian for another sloppy kiss. Adrian tucked a hand under her to cradle her head and began to increase the pace of his thrusts again, his breathing unsteady as he got closer to an orgasm of his own. Trevor took himself in hand and stroked in time with them, eagerly chasing the pleasure himself. 

Adrian grunted and curled in over Sypha with a stutter of his hips. They all paused for breath, looking at one another. Sypha pulled up and pressed her lips against Adrian’s, then they both turned and all but pounced at Trevor, pinning him down and running their hands and mouths all over him. 

“Oh Christ.” Trevor gasped as Sypha swallowed his cock and dug her fingers into his thigh. Adrian grabbed his face and kissed him with such desperate passion that Trevor forgot to breathe for a moment. Adrian’s teeth dragged across Trevor’s bottom lip and Sypha’s tongue rubbed against his cock, and he whimpered into them, lost his balance a little, and let his mind turn off as his body convulsed into the hands suddenly grasping him tight.

They slumped down together, panting and sweaty. Fingers tangled with one another and in hair, and softer, less hungry kisses were exchanged.

“I didn’t realise how much I needed that.” Adrian said.

Sypha draped an arm across his belly.

“I knew I did. It’s so much less fun when you have to be quiet. And when you’re in mortal danger.”

“You think that’s passed then?” Trevor asked.

“I think it’s not imminent while the sun is up.” She grinned.

  
  


Where there had been a proliferation of turrets and buttresses, the empty site where Dracula’s castle had landed now only seemed to contain a single temporary cabin. Adrian approached it confidently and knocked on the door.

It boomed like it was made of long-aged oak, rather than chipboard. 

“Hell of a disguise.” Trevor said. “Am I the only one having trouble with the fact we’ve gone from trying to prevent Dracula  _ existing _ to going to dinner with him?” Adrian smiled at him.

“You’re not. But… it’s not the first time mother has completely changed his path.”

“Are we um- are we trusting him?” Sypha asked.

Adrian turned to Sypha as the cabin door opened on to the great hall of the castle, and Lisa. 

“I’ve never seen him as broken down as that. Even when mother died, the monsters weren’t just left to their own devices.” He took a deep breath. “And this is the first time I’ve known him admit fault for anything.”

“Good evening.” Lisa said. Adrian gave her a smile like a sunrise and she beamed back. “The abrupt change of heart worrying you?” She raised an eyebrow at Trevor and Sypha.

“It’s an impressive turnaround for a matter of days.” Sypha admitted. Adrian nodded.

“But; even when he really was bent on absolute destruction, trickery and lying really never was his  _ style _ . I can’t imagine him going to these lengths to convince anyone of something - he’s too powerful to need to, aside from anything else.”

“I’m certain the dishonesty is a factor in why he’s so upset with the followers who brought us back.” Lisa said, ushering them inside.

“We brought a bag for you.” Adrian handed over the small holdall of things they thought Lisa might want from the flat - books, her toothbrush. She took it with another warm smile. She was reassuring and comfortable enough in the castle that Trevor felt the walls of tension he’d built up begin to crumble in the face of it, but then footsteps rang out coming down a flight of stairs at the far end of the hall and Dracula emerged from the shadows. 

He bowed low. 

“Good evening. May I take your coats?.”

Trevor could feel his hackles rise and the tightness winding back into his shoulders, but followed Adrian’s lead when he took off his jacket and handed it over. 

Dracula draped them over his arm like the most gothic coat rack imaginable and strode off down a corridor with Lisa behind him. He led them to a small dining room with a crackling fire in the hearth and a hefty oak table laid for dinner.

“I was expecting one of those dining tables you have to squint to see the end of.” Trevor muttered to Sypha with a smirk.

“We felt this was more appropriate to a family dinner.” Dracula arched an eyebrow at him and Trevor felt his mouth go dry. He coughed awkwardly. 

“Oh, of course, yeah.”

The atmosphere relaxed enough to be bearable once the wine was poured. Lisa and Sypha smiled and joked and shared cooking tips while Adrian watched Trevor and Dracula watch each other. 

“And how fares the clan of my most ancient enemies?” Dracula asked.

Trevor cleared his throat and pulled himself up to his full height - for what little good it did in the face of Mr tall, dark, and spooky.

“I’m fine, thanks.” he said.

“You’re… Just you?” Dracula’s brow furrowed and his ears twitched. 

“Just me. Parents sadly departed, my sister married out and wanted a normal life, so I’m the last one doing The Work.” Trevor gritted his teeth and tried to hold Dracula’s gaze. 

“I’m very sorry to hear that. I understand that it has become increasingly difficult to meld those duties with participating in the rest of society.”

Trevor frowned. Adrian leant over and placed a hand on his knee. 

“There are plenty of nasty things out there that might have stood in Vlad Tepes’s way if there had been no Belmonts to tidy them up.” He explained.

“Chaos benefits very few in this world.” Dracula agreed. “And having something to struggle against keeps us all sharper.” He smiled with apparently genuine humour. 

Trevor suppressed a shiver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So close to finishing I can almost taste it. Thanks for your patience while I slooowly teased this chapter out of my brain. 
> 
> Dadcula is kind of a babe, no?


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was never going to be as simple as just going to dinner with Dracula.

Adrian and Dracula were helping Lisa clear the dishes from the table when Dracula abruptly stalled and pricked up his long ears. 

“That was fast. I was expecting a more cautious approach from them.” There was a booming noise as someone pounded on the castle door. Dracula’s eyes narrowed and he swept from the room, shouting over his shoulder; “Follow me.”

“Did he hear them from outside the door?” Trevor hissed at the back of Adrian’s head as they trailed in Dracula’s wake.

“No, there are-” He waggled his fingers as he searched for the words. “Sort of- fields - I suppose, that alert him to visitors.”

Dracula turned and opened his arms to guide them all into a study. 

“You will all need to stay here, I’ll set the mirror so you can hear them but they can’t hear you. Don’t turn the lights on.” He traced glowing sigils into the glass of a full length mirror standing in the corner, and stepped through it as the image in it coalesced into a view over the great hall. 

“So he definitely didn’t overhear us talking about him when we arrived?” Trevor said.

“Does he intend to confront them alone?!” Adrian whirled round to face Lisa. She quirked an eyebrow

“He feels it will be to our advantage if they don’t know we’re reconciled.” She explained, sitting down in a wing-backed chair beside the fireplace. “Should allow him to extract a bit more information before he has to kill them. And, no Trevor, he wasn’t quite close enough to overhear your doubts.”

Through the transmission mirror, Trevor could now see Dracula stride to a dais at one end of the room, and slump himself down on a huge chair before making a single gesture to open the doors. 

Two figures walked into the hall. 

“Fuck.” Trevor swore. Adrian came up behind him. 

“It’s Clemency, from the house-” Trevor didn’t recognise the other vampire with her, though they were both very sleekly dressed. It was at least nice to see that Clemency had a livid scar across her hand and creeping out of the neckline of her shirt that had to have been from Sypha’s magical flames. 

Adrian growled.

“Adrian.” Sypha warned. She’d settled on to the rug beside Lisa, but looked ready to get up and intervene. Trevor couldn’t tell if it would be to prevent Adrian blowing the subterfuge or to help him tear Clemency limb from limb.

Adrian took a breath and smoothed his hair. 

“Are you alright?” He said to Trevor.

“Yes.” He nodded, then flicked his eyes between his lovers’ faces. “I don’t think she will be for long though.”

Adrian and Sypha both smiled tight, sharp, little smiles with steel behind them. 

“Jan, Clemency,” Dracula acknowledged his guests in a weary tone. “You found me then.”

“My lord.” Jan bowed low as he and Clemency reached the foot of the dais. “We were concerned you might have abandoned us.”

“Hm.” Dracula had his chin rested in his hand like a bored schoolboy ignoring a lecture. “I considered retreating back to Wallachia. What good does it do me to be here, after all.”

“Your loyal followers are here, lord. Ready to enact your commands and swallow this land in darkness.” Clemency’s lip curled, flashing her long canines. 

Dracula sighed. 

“I’ve been wasting my time for centuries, and she’s the only one who could make me listen. You know, she suggested you might have all sorts of awful things in mind for her… why  _ did _ you bring her back if it was only going to hurt me?”

“My lord, we certainly did not intend for it to be any cause of pain for you.” Clemency and Jan both shifted their stances, adopting a more submissive attitude. 

“Then what did you hope to achieve?” Dracula’s voice was low and bleak. He straightened a little in his seat, glowering down at the vampires in front of him. Jan had apparently picked up the implicit threat in the situation, and was starting to look about the room as if searching for escape routes. Clemency swallowed hard but held Dracula’s eye.

“We have seen some of the plans you had for managing and controlling humanity; for blocking the sun to create a night-kingdom. We were  _ inspired, _ my lord. We know that the loss of your wife stoked a fury in you that left you able only to seek their extinction…

And the thought of you in that much pain again - we sought only to remove that particular bar to those plans.” She finished with a smile that might have been sweet if Trevor didn’t know any better, might have seemed innocent and soothing if she were at all trustworthy. 

“Then I do wonder,” Dracula rose from his seat, keeping his tone strictly measured. “Why it is that her mind contains rather different things than before she was taken from me? Why the things she has been left with are so… particular.”

“You know what is in her mind, my lord?” Jan’s voice squeaked, betraying his fear. He and Clemency both looked poised to run.

“What happens if they make a break for it?” Trevor whispered.

“He’ll have wards on all the exits, there’s nowhere they can run to.” Adrian muttered back. His hands had started to curl and uncurl as the conversation confirmed their suspicions of what these vampires were about, and he was watching them with the intensity of a cat about to pounce. 

“I know what she told me when we talked.” Dracula paced across the front of his dais. “The most recent memory she has is - hm, it pains me to think of it, I would never offer it again, knowing how she felt.” He paused and faced his followers. “If anyone were to force it on her, my fury would be like nothing else.” 

“We wouldn’t dare cause any harm to your House!” Jan protested. 

“That’s what I thought, but my son…”

Clemency’s stance had gone stiff, and her ears had flattened against her head like a cornered animal. Jan didn’t look much more relaxed.

Trevor turned and raised an eyebrow at Adrian, then Sypha.

“Is he going to kill them?” She whispered.

Adrian shook his head.

“Not until they’re begging him to.”

Dracula loomed over the vampires. He flicked his gaze just briefly up to where the mirror looked in on the hall. Adrian nodded.

“Be ready” he said, waving to Sypha and Lisa to join them.

Dracula continued to prowl. 

“You boasted about capturing the Belmont, bleeding him. You didn’t mention he was a companion to Alucard.”

Trevor wouldn’t have thought the vampires could have got more tense than they already were, but Clemency had gone almost totally still, frozen to the spot but for a quiver of over-clenched muscles. 

“Did you really think that would be no problem? The betrayal of my house, lying to me, trying to steal my wife’s humanity?” Dracula’s voice carried through the silent hall. “Or rather, did you really believe it when whoever pulls your strings said you could get away with it?”

“My lord-” Jan was cut off before he could make any excuses.

“Don’t try and tell me you were making the decisions, no one who could devise such a convoluted scheme would put themselves in the path of the storm that might result from its failure.”

“Your son opposes you, why should his people benefit from loyalty?” Clemency all but spat the words.

“My son used to oppose me. I think we have found some common ground, recently. You might even be able to guess what it is. Now. You should tell me who you report to. If you’re compliant about it I might even let you live.”

Dracula appeared to get even taller, but it might have been an illusion caused by Adrian sweeping them all through the mirror to alight on the balcony inside the hall. 

The vampires immediately pricked their ears and whirled round in search of the heartbeats that had suddenly arrived. 

“Surround them.” Adrian muttered, and flashed away to appear in front of his father, between Clemency and Jan and the only door out of the room. 

Lisa and Sypha fanned out along the balcony. Something occurred to Trevor and he turned and gave chase. 

“Lisa are you-?” 

Lisa interrupted before Trevor could finish his question by producing a silver bladed rapier apparently from thin air. She grinned.

“Right, no problem then.” Trevor said, and headed for an empty space.

Jan and Clemency looked at one another and then leapt in opposite directions. 

Sypha shot a fireball in Clemency’s way and Adrian intercepted Jan, sword at the ready. 

Trevor looped his whip round a handrail and swung himself down to the floor. He hit the ground running just as Clemency dodged around the fireball and headed for the door again.

She was only feet from the threshold when Trevor flicked his wrist to send his whip out towards her. It wrapped around her ankle and toppled her over, then he pulled and brought her, snarling, back into the room. 

Jan was narrowly managing to parry Adrian’s sword with his claws, his teeth bared and hissing in frustration. Clemency was struggling to her feet as Jan seemed to see an opening and tried to dart for the door again. Whatever his plan had been, he miscalculated. Adrian’s arm swung through the air and his blade split Jan in two through his ribcage, then removed his head.

Clemency shrieked in rage and swiped a fistful of claws at Trevor before turning to run.

“Keep her there!” Dracula bellowed. 

Sypha flicked her hands across her chest and Clemency’s lower legs were pinned, caged and impaled by long spikes of ice that erupted from the floor under her. She howled, guttural and ragged, for a full lungful of breath before breaking down to growls. 

“If you were up to running this vast operation I would have expected you to make that a little more of a fight.” Dracula took two strides and pulled her upward by her throat to look her in the eye. She growled.  


Adrian floated upward and offered Lisa a hand. Trevor watched them descend, closely followed by Sypha, using her hands like a retro rocket to land safely on the ground.

Dracula prowled around his prey.

“At least you know you needn’t keep trying to lie to me. I’m patient, Clemency, if you don’t wish to tell me now, I will simply hurt you until you do.”

She snarled again, and all three humans took a step back. 

“We’ll be back in the kitchen dear. Trevor, Sypha. I’ll put the kettle on.” Lisa steered them from the room, leaving Adrian and Dracula behind. 

“You don’t have to protect us from this, Lisa.” Sypha said as they headed down the corridors away from the carnage in the hall. 

“Oh, this is entirely for my own benefit, I apologise for using you as an excuse.” They turned into the kitchen, followed by an agonised wail. “I find it distasteful, honestly, even if it’s the most direct way to get the information.”

“Even if she deserves it?” Sypha handed her the heavy kettle off the stove. Her mouth was set in a hard line and her free hand twitched halfway to a casting gesture before clenching into a fist. Lisa responded after a quiet moment with an almost imperceptible nod. 

“Do you want to go back and help, Sypha?” Trevor reached across the tabletop to her. A little half-smile crept on to her lips.

“I can help from here.” Her fingers twitched again, more purposefully, and another agonised sound echoed through the castle.Trevor smiled.

“You don’t need to hurt her on my account.” He reminded her.

“I know. I’m hurting her for me.” Sypha took a seat. The kettle sloshed as Lisa set it down on the hotplate. 

Trevor got up when the kettle started to whistle and took over making tea. Lisa started washing dishes instead, and ignored Trevor’s helpless gesture at the dining chair opposite Sypha. 

Sypha did acknowledge it, and smirked at him, then leaned back on her chair to watch and listen down the corridor. 

She wrapped her hands around the mug when Trevor brought the tea to the table. They sat quietly among the gentle noises of Lisa washing up, and the less gentle screams from the hall.

Lisa filled the drainer and came to join them at the table. 

“It was lovely to have you all visit. I sort of expected you to turn us down when Vlad asked.” 

“I hoped Adrian would.” Trevor grimaced a little. “Uh, but it was a nice dinner… Bit of entertainment too.”

Lisa smiled into her lap. 

“I’m not so happy with that part.” 

They were interrupted by the click of Adrian’s boots on the flagstones in the corridor. Sypha got up as he came into the room.

“Did she break already?”

“Not yet,” Adrian smiled at her. “Father thinks it might take a good few hours, and it’s already late.”

“Hmm, I suppose he’ll spend the night trying to make her wish she was dead?” Lisa sighed. “You should all go home and get some rest. I can let you know when there’s news.” She pulled Adrian into a full-body hug, standing on the very tips of her toes to get her head on his shoulder. She patted him on the back when she released him.

“Go on, home to bed, all of you.”

They didn’t argue. 

  
  


Trevor was yawning hugely by the time they got back to the flat. They relieved themselves of coats and shoes and drifted into the bedroom. Adrian took Trevor by the shoulders and started unbuttoning his shirt for him.

“Thank you for making an effort with father, Trevor.” He was holding eye contact so steadily, speaking so sincerely, that Trevor couldn’t help but squirm. 

“Yeah well, everyone cares a bit that their parents approve of their choices right? I didn’t want to let you down.” The eye contact wasn’t abating, and Adrian’s face was open and tender. Trevor couldn’t take it. “And - hm - if he wasn’t literally Dracula I might even say I thought he was quite likable.” 

Adrian rolled his eyes a little and raised a hand to his mouth to cover a smile. 

“I’m glad the way the evening ended hasn’t appalled you.”

“It’d be a bit rich if it did.”

“How many things did we kill the first night we met?” Sypha grinned. “Even the prejudices of the Belmonts won’t indulge that much hypocrisy.”

“Oh yeah I wonder why I might hold some prejudice towards literal Dracula. At least I haven’t gone too far the other way - ‘gosh isn’t he  _ tall _ ’!” Trevor quoted, exaggerating the intonation. “I know what that means, you said the same about Adrian.”

She raised her chin into the air and looked at Trevor down her nose. 

“It means he’s tall, nothing more. I think you’re just jealous.” 

Adrian huffed out a laugh.

“Ah Trevor, you know I love you even though you’re short.”

Trevor clenched his jaw and his fists. No comeback was forthcoming so he wagged his finger at both of them, then pulled himself up to his full height and carried a flat hand from the top of his own head over to bump into Adrian’s hairline.

“One inch, that’s all.”

Adrian beamed. Trevor was pretty sure it was the most joyous smile he’d seen in weeks. He beamed back. Sypha bundled them both into a cuddle. 

“It’s gone midnight, can we go to fucking bed, please?”

The morning drifted unhurriedly by. There was coffee and toast, Trevor remembered he probably ought to contact his sister, but only managed to fire off a text that read;

“U wont believe how the drac thing has turned out” before there was a jingling from the bedroom and Adrian put down his mug and went to see what it was. 

“He sent a bloody raven the dramatic bastard, it’s not like mother couldn’t have texted.” He said as he returned. He was brandishing a piece of parchment.

“Do you think they got some information overnight?” Sypha asked.

“I suppose they must have done.” Adrian broke the seal on the parchment and unfolded it with a furrow in his brow. His frown intensified as his eyes moved over the message. “They’ve left for the continent…” He said. “Look-”

Trevor took the message and read the looping script Dracula had written on it;

_ Adrian, _

_ Our opposition has robbed you of a great many years of life, and I am sorry to have done that to you.  _

_ I will not oblige you to participate in this, and deprive you of yet more time, so we have taken the castle to pursue them. Clemency was eventually quite forthcoming, please tell Sypha her contribution was a great help. _

_ Your mother says she will be telephoning you regularly to catch up.   
_

In different handwriting underneath it said:

_ p.s. go have fun, love you _

_ x L _

Trevor was lost for words. He looked up from the letter and Adrian’s face likewise slack-jawed and lost.

Sypha reached out for Adrian’s hand.

“Are you alright?”

“I never imagined I’d be… that he’d - it’s been my whole life and he’s relieved me of the duty.” His voice was hoarse. He lowered himself into his seat at the kitchen table and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Now what do I do?”

Trevor’s phone buzzed on the tabletop. 

“Holiday? Jude’s place has got that guest room and the big garden.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg guys we did it. 
> 
> I'm considering a fluffy epilogue *maybe* but this is the plot part all wrapped up.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most ambitious writing I've ever tried to do and I will need your encouragement.


End file.
